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Since Freud gave in his Interpretation of Dreams the first scientific basis for the psychology of dreams most of the psycho-analytic work has been devoted to the confirmation of Freud's original conception in the form of case reports taken from the analysis of neurotic persons and children and observations about the dreams of primitive tribes.
Recently the dream problem has been approached by analysts from new angles, for instance, the influence of the ego in the formation of dreams has been studied and analytic knowledge and theories have been applied to cases with brain tumours in order to get more insight into the problem of sleep. Another new and promising research has been started by the Swiss analyst, M. Boss, Schloss Knonau, who published recently a paper about the psychopathology of dreams in schizophrenia and organic psychoses. This paper, published in the German language in a journal not accessible to many psycho-analysts, is worthy of reviewing in detail.
It may be pertinent to give a short outline of some observations and publications which are devoted to the same problem, and which form the background of Dr. Boss' recent publication. The main work about dreams in epileptics, hypophrenics and alcoholics was written by Sante de Sanctis. He summarized his dream investigations in ninety-one epileptics with the statement that during states of cortical irritation the frequency,