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From an experimental study of dream recall and forgetting, and utilizing the data of recent psychophysiological research on sleep and dreaming, as well as psychoanalytic theory, Whitman concludes that the forgetting of dreams has an ego and a content aspect. It may be inferred that he means nonconflictual as well as conflictual determinants. In addition to being repressed, dreams are said to be also forgotten because of the ego's difficulty in conceptualizing primary process thinking in secondary process terms and because of the demands on the ego of other functions. Since therefore, not all forgetting of dreams is due to resistance, Whitman recommends that, contrary to classical analytic practice, patients be permitted (not instructed) to write them down as an aid in their recovery.
Experimentally more dreams are recalled with awakenings during dreaming than with awakenings at other times, and less as the time since awakening increases. This cannot be correlated with repression but rather by considering the above-mentioned demands on the ego to explain the latter, and by considering for the former that the dream is itself a hallucinatory oral experience which maintains sleep by providing direct gratification. Satisfying and completed oral experiences are said to be more easily forgotten than unsatisfactory or incomplete ones.