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This Paper will attempt to bridge some of the gap between clinical dream phenomena and sleep research involving dreaming and REM periods, especially as the latter relates to findings dealing with learning, adaptation and memory. First, I will begin by summarising some current views of learning and memory from the perspective of sleep research. Then, some clinical views of the dream will be noted with an emphasis on integrative models of dreaming that have been proposed connected with Jung's main dream theory. Subsequently, the dreams from Freud's ‘Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria’ will be presented and discussed.
Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in 1900 began the modern era of the study of dreams. His approach was intended to provide an understanding of unconscious drives and motivation that could be applied in a clinical sense. Dreams, for Freud, offered a ‘royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind’ (FREUD 8, p. 608).
Aserinsky and Kleitman, in 1953 (2), published a study on ‘regularly occurring periods of eye motility’, i.e., rapid eye movements (REMs), which initiated the current era of empirical studies of sleep phenomena. It has been established that there are at least two phases of sleep, a phase of rapid eye movement (REM) and a phase of non-rapid eye movement (NREM). Each of these phases has defining characteristics. Important for sleep and dream researchers was the finding that dreams occurred at predictable intervals throughout the