Contributions to psychohistory: XV. Structural characteristics as an index of mental health in Freud's, his patients' and colleagues' manifest dreams.

Abstract

Evolution of psychoanalytic dream theory from the topographical-conflict model resulted in the relative ascendance of manifest dream content and structure. Correspondingly, Freud's emphasis on the latent dream, disguised unconscious wish-fulfillment function, was paralleled by the development of an ego problem-solving-conflict function demonstrably observable in subjects' and patients' nocturnal dreams in sleep-lab REM awakenings. This development culminated in clinical, theoretical, and operational adoption of binary opposition as a language of manifest dream structure and a corresponding definition of mental health in terms of personal problem-solving efficacy measured in a narrative as self-defined, self-advocacy-adversary statements of sequences. Process and outcome measures from initial studies of psychoanalytic patients and nonpatients' dreams evidenced concurrent validity. Use of this measure on the three types of dreams reported in Freud's seminal The Interpretation of Dreams yielded results which support the inference that Freud's dreams are significantly more healthy than those of his patients or others (mostly colleagues).