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The influence of dreams on the waking ego has generally been a greatly neglected aspect of dream psychology. Freud devoted little attention to this phase except to rightfully point out that theories such as Maeder's “Prospective Tendency” of dreams, wherein there is an attempt at adapting to current and future tasks, tend to generalizations and disregard the difference between the dream manifest and latent contents (2). However, he acknowledged an element of truth in these theories.
Freud (8) considers that theories such as the “prospective tendency” or “thinking ahead” (Adler) functions of dreams “has no claim to be considered as a part of the subject of dream interpretation” on the basis that thinking ahead, forming intentions, framing attempted solutions, and so on are products of unconscious and preconscious activity of the mind. While he agrees that the achievement of real solutions may occur on rare occasions where an unsolved problem of waking life exists, this solution is merely incidental to the dream work (7).
More recently, Hadfield (9) has offered the “Biological Theory” of dreams which is based on pre-existing views, “the popular views as well as the more scientific”, and is intended to give dreams a more prominent biological significance. This theory is defined as (12): “Dreams by repeating in imagery the problems and difficulties of the day, tend towards a solution of these problems. Thus dreams have a significance for life and the problems for living. That is why we call ours the ‘biological’ theory—using the term ‘biological’ somewhat arbitrarily, as signifying ‘adaptation to life’—to subjective as well as to objective life.” Definite impetus is given by this conception toward a clearer understanding of the psychobiologic role which dreams have in striving for organismal homeo-stasis because emphasis is placed on the more immediate effects of dreams on the waking ego and tends to greater specificity in regard to stress factors.
There are certain drawba