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The editor appropriately refers to this symposium as a “kind of pilot attempt” to explore its subject on the basis of presently valid scientific principles. The eleven papers he has assembled compose a somewhat diffusely focused monograph encompassing psychophysiological and phenomenological findings, clinical observations, and commentaries on Freudian and Jungian theories of dream interpretation.
Louise Bates Ames, in an outstanding report from the Gesell Institute, details characteristic changes in sleep patterns and dreams during the first sixteen years of life. Summarizing evidence emerging from an intensive longitudinal study of a group of New Haven children, she writes: “In general in the early pre-school years the outstanding sleep difficulties first made themselves apparent at bedtime, then moved along till the middle of the night and then to waking. By 8 years of age they again occurred most characteristically around bedtime; then in the pre-teen years occurred during the night; then in the early teens moved ahead till morning. There thus appears to be not only considerable similarity from child to child in the kinds of sleep difficulties which commonly occur at any given age—but also at least the suggestion of a time pattern in the changes which occur as the child matures.”
Evidence of a relationship between age and the subject-matter of dreams is also reported. Children begin to talk about their dreams at the age of three, but do not become the “central acting figure” in them until the age of seven. Before then, there is a “definite lack of aggressive dreams,” and fears for parents figure prominently in dreams. The dreams of the older child tend to reflect his own real fears and worries about himself.
Howard P. Roffwarg, William C. Dement, and Charles Fisher present “preliminary observations” on differences in the sleep patterns of