Psychoanalytic Implications of Recent Research on Sleep and Dreaming—Part I: Empirical Findings

FREUD'S earliest program was to develop a general psychology on neurophysiological lines (53). Although this attempt failed and Freud concluded that the theory of behavior must be a psychological one, he never gave up the belief that ultimately the link between psychoanalysis and physico-chemico-biological processes would be found. During the past decade some revolutionary discoveries have been made on the nature of sleep and dreaming, the full implications of which have not yet been integrated into psychoanalytic theory. These discoveries involve significant correlations between dreaming as a psychological process and the physiological and neurophysiological events that are concomitant and synchronous with it. They constitute what Snyder (150) has called "The New Biology of Dreaming." Most of what we know about dreams and dreaming we have learned from Freud, but it must be admitted that not many basic advances in our understanding have occurred since Freud's time. As revealing as the psychoanalytic method has been, the answers to many simple questions are beyond its investigative reach. How much dreaming occurs each night? When during the night does it occur? In what stage of sleep? Are there age and sex differences? Are there fluctuations in the amount of dreaming in various types of mental disease? Can drugs affect the nature and quantity of dreaming? What are the physiological and neurophysiological concomitants of