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“Does the foetus have dreams in the mother's womb? What is the function of children's dreams? Can children who are blind from birth have dreams?” These questions on the back cover of What Do Children Dreamt caught my eye and made me think this might be a potentially fascinating book to read and review for fort da. Rather than give a general review of the book, I will attempt to describe some of author Bleandonu's answers to these questions and give my impressions of the book as well as his perspective on how children's dreaming is different from that of adults.
Bleandonu lays out a theory of dreaming as an essential component of mental development. He distinguishes five stages of oneiric life in the developing child, which he portrays as the product of our interacting physical/neurological development and our social capacities/experience. He points out that the biological dream of the fetus manifests the same observable characteristics as adult REM sleep, but, compared with the adult, the mental capacity of the newly forming human is severely limited. The psychological dream is a product of the mother's reverie — intersubjectivity — and the baby's ability to wish. This can occur as early as 12 months. With the onset of language, the infant begins to have a social dialogue about his/her dreams. Bleandonu's thesis is that the development of dreaming is not only an active, ongoing part of mental development, it is an indispensable impetus for the child's mental development.
Dreaming functions as a “new mode of programming in the brain” (p. 117). As Freud (1900) points out, dreaming uses a different mode of mental process than we utilize in waking life. Bleandonu says it “enables broader and more intense connections to be made … which are dictated by the dreamer's dominant emotion” (Bleandonu, , p. 74). We live in and experience the same world as everyone around us, but we process that world in a unique way in our dreams, free of conventional dictates and social restraint