Abstract
“A dream is invariably an attempt to get rid of a disturbance of sleep by means of a wish-fullfilment, so that the dream is a guardian of sleep”. Sigmund Freud (1940/1953) According to the classic theory framed by Sigmund Freud, the basic and teleological function of dreaming is to protect sleep from disruption (Freud, 1900/1953); a quite rational hypothesis since sleep constitutes a vital need for living species (Kryger et al., 2011). This aspect of Freud's dream model—which as a whole is considered as the initial cornerstone of psychoanalysis (Laplanche and Pontalis, 1988)—leads to two empirically testable conjectures, thus allowing its scientific examination: (1) arousal during sleep triggers dreaming; and (2) non-dreaming causes sleep disruption. We review here the experimental, medical, and neuropsychological data which allow testing these two conjectures; in this paper, the term “significant” denotes statistical significance at the p < 0.05 level.
Highlights
According to the classic theory framed by Sigmund Freud, the basic and teleological function of dreaming is to protect sleep from disruption (Freud, 1900/1953); a quite rational hypothesis since sleep constitutes a vital need for living species (Kryger et al, 2011)
The non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep finding was replicated with tone stimulation (46% vs. 9%; Fedyszyn and Conduit, 2007); by contrast, arousal during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was not associated with increased dreaming in subsequent studies (Fedyszyn and Conduit, 2007; Stuart and Conduit, 2009)
Sleep laboratory studies showed that REM sleep is associated with dreaming in approximately 80% of times on average; and NREM sleep stage 2 in approximately 20% of times, but these measures vary with time of the night and gender and age of subjects
Summary
“A dream is invariably an attempt to get rid of a disturbance of sleep by means of a wish-fullfilment, so that the dream is a guardian of sleep.”. Communication), no increase in questionnaire-measured DRF was shown compared to healthy controls This set of studies, entail considerable limits for our perspective, which are that: (1) dream questionnaires only partially reflect nighttime dreaming as a whole (Schredl, 2007); (2) no dream study in the sleep laboratory has been conducted to date in sleep movement disorders, and such studies in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome did not investigate NREM sleep dreaming (Gross and Lavie, 1994; Carrasco et al, 2006); and (3) caution must be taken when drawing general psychophysiological conclusions from pathology. According to the Freudian model, another and major source of arousal during sleep is unsatisfied drive demands (Freud, 1917/1953): those which are repressed at wake overtake the sleeping ego’s capacity for repression, and find a way to consciousness using the primary www.frontiersin.org
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