The Organizing Functions of Dreaming–A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Model: Commentary on Paper by Hazel Ipp

Dream mentation, a process that occurs during sleep, centrally functions, as waking mentation does, to process information. When we dream, we use variably dual modes of cognition—the imagistic, sensory-dominated primary-process mode and the linguistically anchored secondary-process mode (Noy, 1969, 1979; McLaughlin, 1978; McKinnon, 1979; Fosshage, 1983, 1987a, b; Lichtenberg, 1983; Bucci, 1985, 1994). These modes appear in dreams in the form of sensory images and spoken and unspoken words. Just as words are placed in a logical, coherent order to shape meaning and cognitive focus, so too are images sequentially ordered to express meaning and to further affective-cognitive processing (Fosshage, 1983). Sensory images tend to evoke more affect (see Epstein, 1994, for a review), which clarifies why dreams (especially rapid eye movement [REM] dreams, which are more imagistically dominated as compared to non-REM [NREM] dreams) can be so emotionally powerful. Although contemporary dream models differ, the view of dreams as centrally processing information is, I believe, an increasingly convergent perspective evolving out of dream and psychophysiological research, contemporary psychoanalytic theory, cognitive psychology, and clinical work.

I refer to my particular model as the organization model of dreams because the core process and function of dreaming is to organize data. I posit, more specifically, that dream mentation, like waking mentation, develops, maintains, and restores psychological organization and