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In a discussion among psychoanalysts it was stated that people rarely laugh in their sleep. No member of the group could recall the dream of a patient in which laughter occurred. This seems strange in that other emotions (fear, anger, sorrow) are frequently expressed in dreams. It is possible that laughter, unlike any other emotion, is a social form of emotional expression. A person who cries wants to be alone. A person usually laughs when he is in company, seldom when he is alone.
Over a period of time it was possible to collect a few examples of laughts in dreams. These observations illustrated the psychodynamics both of laughter and of dreams, and gave insight into the rôle of the ego in both.
In the psychoanalytic literature Freud,1 quoting Ferenczi,2 reported one 'laughing dream' of an elderly gentleman, awakened by his wife who grew anxious because of his loud and continued laughter while asleep, and he recalled the following dream.
I was lying in bed. An acquaintance of mine came in and I tried to turn the lights on. I tried it again and again without being able to do it. My wife left her bed to help me but she was self-conscious because of her negligee. She too gave up and went back to bed. All this was so amusing that I had to laugh terribly.
Freud used this dream to illustrate the distortion of an emotion and the transformation into its opposite. The old man was actually thinking of his arteriosclerosis, his impotence, his old age and approaching death. The dream work turned his anxiety, grief and depression into laughter. The 'light of life' which forms the central motive of the dream cannot be turned