I wanted to be a psychoanalyst and that was because I've been reading books by Freud

and all the other analysts when I was an undergraduate. And I had taken a course as an
undergraduate from Manchester-- charismatic teacher who was totally a Freudian and I
got so steeped in all the ego and all that. And the medical students were supposed to do
research or hook up with somebody to do a <quarter> research and I just couldn't
decide so in my freshman year I didn't do anything like-- I took a course. And then in the
beginning of the sophomore year, in neurophysiology, Nathaniel Kleitman who was one
of the professors that taught there physiology, gave a talk and he talked a little bit about
consciousness. And this is not original but I had become very interested in how the mind
and the brain can interact. And how the brain can give rise to the mental. And I thought
well if here's this man studying sleep and if we can learn what we lose when we fall
asleep and what comes back when we wake up, that should certainly shed some light
on how the brain creates a conscious mind. And so I knocked on his door. He opened
the door, not very widely. He was somewhat brusque but as I got to know him - I don't
know why I feel like I have to say this now because some people have mentioned that I
painted him as a little too abrupt - I grew to love him is the actual truth. But anyway, I
said, "I'm very interested to work with you," not really knowing exactly what he did. And
he said, "Have you read my book?" And the book was Sleep and <Lightfulness?>, 1st
edition 1939-- it was extremely well-written. I'm assuming to come back and <say that?>
I've read your book which probably impressed him. And he said you can work with me.
He put me immediately to work, helping his only graduate student at the time.
<inaudible> and for years it had been known that as you fall asleep your eyes can drift
slowly back and forth and Klaidman thought that that might be a good indicator of the
depth of sleep. And he began to study eye motility. Not saying rapid versus slow but just
eye motility or anything in infants. And then, I think, somebody suggested that maybe
we should study older folks and that it'd be good to use brain wave recordings. Well,
what they had then was sort of a polygraph of this Offner electro <something>. It looked
like a roll of adding machine paper, one pen and it didn't work. Fortunately, for
everybody a cardiovascular physiologist named John Perkins, who was in the
department of physiology, had been given a Four-channel, Four-amplifier Grass Model
3 vacuum tube [electroencephalogram?] or polygraph and he would let Aserinsky use it
and Aserinsky discovered electrooculography. Now the <inaudible> were very, very
badly observed. Both on the polygraph and in the <Sub-G?> but what originally were
the first Rapid Eye Movement recordings was thought to be artifact. This vacuum tube
amplifies you breathe hard <inaudible>