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To the Editors: I read Dr. Lindon's paper with great interest and have two main reactions: I see the paper as an interesting and stimulating contribution to the psychology of dreams, creativity and psychopathology; also, I am trying to fit this paper in with the physiological research of Kleitman, Dement, and coworkers on sleep and dreaming.
How do we correlate the report from these investigators that on the average we all dream roughly two hours a night with rapid eye movements testifying to the vivid visual imagery of our dreams, and yet most of us remember only fragments or nothing, then occasionally one dream stands out so vividly that it dominates a period of life?
One of Dement's current hypotheses about dream-sleep is that it may be a vestigial remnant of a once vital function. He suggests that “rapid eye movement” (REM) sleep is a way for the fetus and infant to exercise its brain and basic drives, but that REM sleep in adults is an atavistic function, like goose pimples. The specific physiological quality so far discovered to be associated with dreaming (in addition to the rapid eye movements) is a pervasive deep relaxation of the muscles. This is mediated through a special mid-brain mechanism. In light of the recent physiology, Freud's specific illustrations of action dreams ending in muscular action has a special meaning. It means that the REM sleep ends abruptly and is replaced by waking action, that is, the off switch in the mid-brain suddenly switches on. In narcolepsy, by contrast, there is a sudden
switch from waking action to the REM sleep state.
Is the most important aspect of this paper the focus on the connection between the dream and the secondary process? I am inclined to accept Lindon's theory that the surgeon had a fairly complete fantasy about pulling out the atheromata but was afraid to take responsibility for the idea, but how does an ambivalently felt idea of this sort descend into the primary process area without being split up and displ