There was a long hiatus concerning interest in dreams for centuries in
the West after the subject became anathematized by the church - linking
any such attention as sorcery. This state of discontinuity was broken in
the 19th century when, in the new age of reason, some scientists again
looked into sleep and dreaming.
Various insightful observations were made
about the dream state. It was realised that some material comes from forgotten
or faint memories. Delboeuf (1885) traced back the name of a plant that
came up in a dream to an occasion two years previously, when he had written
it in a book. Alfred Maury (1878) saw a man who gave his name in a dream.
He discovered that he knew the man as a small child. It was also noticed
that dreams often incorporate recent memories, especially of the day before
the dream - 'day residues'.
External stimuli, such as noises and scents,
registered in dreams according to research by Maury and The Marquis Hervey
de St Denys, and some researchers thought that unclear stimuli gave rise
to dreams. Internal stimuli, for example ringing in the ears, could also
influence dream content, so that the mind becomes more aware of the body
- as Aristotle had long ago stated.
Certain typical dreams were given a physiological
explanation. Thus, the dream of flying was supposed to be caused by the
sensation of the lungs sinking when the thorax is insensitive.
Schleiermacher (1862) said that when awake
we think in ideas, but in sleep the mind's activity becomes thinking in
pictures. Spitta (1892) termed this transformation of an idea into a hallucination,
dramatization.
It was obvious to many dream researchers that the
dream followed associative pathways. Maury gave examples of phonetic links.
As a modern example, Dr Hearne had a dream in which he was in a train that
pulled into a station clearly having the name Akpinar. This was the name
of a psychologist, whose papers he'd been reading during the day (a day
residue). Suddenly, he was in a park. The phonetic connection was obvious
to Hearne. It was as if the sight of the name stimulated a re-arrangement
of the letters, which then acted as a cue to establish a new direction
for the dream.
Jessen (1856) pointed out the seeming lack
of conscience on dreams - a person may think nothing of murder, and Hildebrandt
(1875) said that there is a removal of inhibition in sleep, so that out
basic nature is revealed.
As to theories, it was generally accepted
at that time that the dream was associated with a partial waking state.
Binz (1878) delightfully believed that sleep was due to 'fatigued albumen
in the brain and that dreams happened when some slight consciousness returned.
Binz, like Maury, did not consider that dreams had a useful function. Robert
(1866), however, did come up with a purpose for dreams - the elimination
or excretion of 'useless thoughts'.
Delage (1891) was of the opinion that dreams
resolved psychic tensions caused by the repression of material, and Burdach
(1830) thought that dreams simply gave the mind a playground to provide
recreation for the individual during sleep.
Albert Scherner (1861) stated that decentralization
occurs in sleep, so that fantasy takes over - using thoughts that are automatically
dramatized
into pictures. He was fully aware of sexual symbolism and gave several
examples. The penis might be represented by a clarinet, pubic hair by fur,
female thighs by a narrow courtyard, and the vagina by a slippery footpath.
While Scherner could not provide a useful function for dreams, Freud built
an elaborate and controversial scheme of things on his, and others', ideas.
Sigmund Freud was born in Moravia. He studied
neurology at Vienna university. He was a bold pioneer and established 'free-association'
and psycho-analysis. He, in effect, 'discovered' the unconscious, and his
views were certainly influential in Western science, art and culture in
the 20th century. To Freud, the dream was the 'Royal road to the knowledge
of the unconscious in mental life'.
Freud's assessment of what was going on in
dreams involved his concept of the personality as consisting of three components
: the id, a primitive, selfish part continually demanding gratification
of basic urges, primarily centring on sex and aggression (rather like Plato's
'wild beast') ; the ego, interacting with the real world and aware of what
is possible ; and, the super-ego, which reminds the individual of moral
and ethical considerations - usually reflecting parental influences.
In the dream, with the conscious ego absent,
the id's incessant requirements result in an appropriate visual pandering
to the underlying urge, but in order not to offend the super-ego, those
unacceptable dream thoughts are changed - by a subterfuge process known
as the 'dream work' - to ones that are acceptable.
An internal censor if cunningly evaded by
producing symbolic versions of the 'unacceptable' thoughts, and the initial
'latent content' (the thoughts of the id) transforms into the 'manifest
content' (i.e. the dream). Spitta's notion of dramatization (or representation)
was included in Freud's ideas. Thoughts were linked together, so producing
something like a theatrical production.
Several 'disguise' techniques were described
by Freud. In condensation, different wishes fuse pictorial symbols, so
producing unusual and often impossible images - a dream person might have
features of several other individuals. The important interpretational point
is what they have in common.
A favourite method of disguise is to introduce
'opposites'. Thus, a dream of a funeral may express a birth wish. Another
is to displace the main element onto a seemingly unimportant feature (transference).
The appearance in dreams of very bizarre sequences of images seemed to
be explained by the repertoire of disguises suggested by Freud.
The purpose of the dream is, in a sense, to
pander to and placate the troublesome id. By providing illusory gratification,
the indirect yet main consequence is that the individual is maintained
in sleep. Another centrepoint of his theory was that the organism basically
seeks inactivity. The dream 'guards' sleep and, essentially, the source
of each dream is an unacceptable, disguised wish.
The interpretation of dreams, according to
Freud, involves tracing the antecedents by a process know as free-association
and eventually coming up with the root wishes.
We can see where Freud was coming from. It
has always been common knowledge that men have erections while dreaming
- yet the dream content may be totally non-sexual - and dreams produce
sexual symbolism. Why ? To evade some part of the mind that would find
the material distasteful
Freud's approach was superficially compelling
and fascinating, providing an overall structure that fitted in with many
observations about dreams, but a modern perspective sees major flaws.
Crucial to Freud's theory is that dreams disguise
- but is that so ? Dream symbols might not be deliberately devious disguises
but simply expressive devices that occur also in waking life - for instance,
a lion can represent courage.
In view of the recognised right-brain and
left-brain differences, it is more economical to accept that the dream
is simply associated with right-brain activity, where verbalization is
transformed into visualization.
Nightmares could not be comfortably embraced
by Freud's notions. What could be the wish behind a dream that is so fearful
that it awakens the dreamer ? Freud thought that perhaps the dream work
had been incompetent so that direct wishes presented themselves, or that
the fulfilment of the wish itself raised too much anxiety.
Some writers have castigated Freud. The philosopher
Karl Popper considered that psycho-analytical theory, including dream theory,
was a myth that was too easily verifiable but not falsifiable, and Hans
Eysenck - perhaps too much involved in Behaviourism - described his work
as unscientific and based on unverifiable metapsychological propositions.
In addition, the apparent link between erections
and dreams, which people have thought supports Freud's sexual basis of
dreams, has been found to be spurious. In sleep-laboratory studies carried
out by Karacan et al (1965), it was found that if subjects were woken each
time they entered REM sleep, eventually the erection cycle shifts out of
phase with subsequent REM (dreaming ) periods. So it seems that the sub-cortical
arousal cycle is independent of REM sleep with which it manifests.
Freud's theories are a provocative viewpoint
which may or may not contain certain truths. Other theorists have presented
equally plausible accounts of what happens when we dream.
Carl Jung springs to mind as the main challenger
to Freud's rigid and uncompromising concepts. Born in Switzerland in 1875,
Jung was the founder of 'analytical psychology'. He grew up in a household
where the occult was accepted, and studied medicine at Basel university,
eventually becoming a psychiatrist.
Initially one of Freud's keen followers, he
broke away. One reason was his inability to accept Freud's dogma about
the sexual basis of behaviour and dreams. The rupture seems to have caused
a severe psychotic breakdown in Jung, but his own introspection during
that time provided much useful knowledge to him of mental processes.
Jung saw the psyche as self-adjusting and
that in life we reconcile opposing parts of our nature. The unconscious
is not just a storehouse of repressed wishes, as in Freudian ideology,
but has the qualities of being a friend, guide and adviser.
Dreams have a special 'compensatory function'
alerting us to imbalances in our personality and enabling us to alter our
behaviour, so that a tendency towards arrogance might be countered, perhaps,
by a 'reductive' dream in which we are humbled in some way.
The dream is a means of communication for
such unconscious information to conscious awareness. During a process of
amplification, the Jungian analyst keeps the patient focused on the dream,
by direct associations, rather than leading away from it by free-association.
The dream also has a prospective function,
looking forward to future possibilities - a concept very different from
Freud's backward locking aspect of dreams.
Some dreams touch on the 'collective unconscious'
belonging to all humankind, and there are universal archetypal images which
manifest in dreams and have a common significance - things such as the
anima and animus (female and male components of us) the wise old man, the
earth mother.
Jung's approach is spiritual and positive,
stressing how dreams can help each of us in our personal self-development.
Other ideas on dreams have developed since
Freud. Alfred Adler (1958) also veered from Freud and presented a further
alternative approach. The main difference was that he saw not much divergence
between the thoughts of wakefulness and those in sleep. Freud's postulated
elaborate disguise mechanism was not accepted by him. However, Adler agreed
that dreams centre on unresolved matters in the dreamer's life.
Montague Ullman (1958, 1962), supporting Jung
rather than Freud, stressed the dream's capacity for revelation rather
than concealment. He too appreciated the metaphorical aspect of dreams.
In modern writers, dogmatic assertions have
been abandoned and a mixture of techniques and beliefs are being employed.
For example, Ann Faraday (1972, 1974) encourages the recording of a dream
diary and a discussion, when awake, between the dreamer and any dream character,
to determine more about the character - this is a method that was employed
by the Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls.
Faraday urges the dreamer firstly to take
the dream literally - it might be a reminder or warning. The dream should
be read as a metaphor, and the feelings give a clue as to the problem it
touches on. The dream points to something that needs attention and the
interpretation will be recognised when it is correct.
Faraday tells the dreamer to look out for
various puns : verbal (gilt - guilt) ; metaphor (shooting me down) ; literal
(bare chest - to get something off your chest).
Discoveries and technical developments in areas
other than psychology have resulted in further contributions to the speculations
about dreams and dreaming sleep.
Evans and Newman (1964), using the analogy
with the then recently introduced computer, observed that the machines
were taken 'off-line' from time to time to update programs and remove excessive
data. Perhaps, they suggested, such intervals of closure corresponded to
the periods of REM sleep and that the dreams were simply by-products of
the process.
Analogous thinking, though, can sometimes create
inappropriate concepts when applied to a different area. The vastly more
complex human brain can perform many tasks at one time (parallel processing)
rather than the step-by-step technique (serial processing) of computers
at that time, so the theory has been left rather high and dry.
In similar vein, biophysicist Francis Crick
(who co-discovered the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule) and
Graeme Mitchison, a mathematician, have suggested that in REM (dreaming)
sleep the brain is concerned with discarding redundant information that
has been taken in during the day. The purpose is to prevent an overload
of information, that could cause confusion. It seems a reasonable idea
at first sight, but the fact that the chemical abolition of REM sleep causes
no observable effects in people (see page --), strongly predicates against
such a theory.
There is a current vogue of by-passing or
ignoring the accumulated wisdom about the psychology of dreams and attempting
in one fell swoop to explain dreams in relation to the ideas of some other
discipline.
However, the 'fallacy of the single causal explanation', well understood
in modern psychology, cautions against such unitary and narrow approaches.
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