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Occasionally a patient dreams that he awakens from a dream and pursues various activities only to discover later that he had not actually awakened, but had still been dreaming. Freud1 gave a brief discussion of such dreams, which he described as the “dream within a dream.” Sometimes, however, there may be a series of such dreams in which the patient dreams that he awoke from a dream that he awoke from a dream, etc. The occurrence of such series of dreams has led us to re-examine the issue to see whether there are major determinants other than the one presented by Freud.
Freud's basic rationale for dreaming is that something threatens to interrupt sleep, but the mind attempts to dispense with the threat by wish fulfillment in the context of the dream. For example, if one needs to urinate but at the same time to continue sleeping, he may dream that he urinates; if the threat is a ringing phone, he may dream that he answers it; if it is the alarm clock ringing, he may dream that he gets up and starts his day. Such threats usually persist, however, and cannot be dispensed with by dreaming, so the dreamer awakens.
Subtler threats to sleep occur in the form of psychological needs. Here the sleeper has a dream in which the psychological need is satisfied, often symbolically, in order to protect the state of sleep. Dreams which protect sleep from a physical interruption may also satisfy psychological needs at the same time. The basic function of dreaming to protect sleep from interruption still applies, be the threat of interruption physical, as in the need to urinate, or psychological, as in anxiety, shame, or guilt.
In the “dream within a dream,” Freud made it clear that the