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DISCUSSION: Dr. Edith Jacobson pointed out that it might be misleading to suggest such a marked dichotomy between the dream process and the dream content. This may lead us to regard the former from a physiological and the latter from a psychological point of view, in terms of our drive theory. She felt that the clinical examples cited illustrate how much the dream content is influenced by the changing function of dreaming in the service of the principles of homeostasis. Of interest are the neurophysiological observations of body movements during sleep, and the conclusions drawn by Pacella that imagery seems to be a substitute for motor action. Dr. Jacobson was reminded of some assumptions she had made regarding the psychoeconomic state of the sleeping or dozing infant, and of her thesis that in the sleeping infant there is a predominantly continuous internal discharge of psychic energy, which may occur partly through psychosomatic channels and partly through tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and kinesthetic hallucinations, and that this type of discharge is relinquished to the extent to which patterns of pleasurable motor discharge to the outside develop.
Dr. Mortimer Ostow felt that it was likely that the primary function of the dream is related to the function of sleep. He compared the cyclicity of the sleep-dream-sleep sequence to that of the sleep-feeding-sleep sequence of the neonate,