The Dream Sourcebook: A Guide to the Theory and Interpretation of Dreams Read Free

aggressive urges. (Freud had a long-standing interest in African tribal beliefs, some of which hold to the idea of dreams as wish fulfillment.) That the people of India divided sleep into different periods throughout the night is at least a coincidental precursor of the scientifically proven cycles of REM and non-REM sleep. That a nineteenth-century scientist might make the connection between visual stimulation and dreams seems part of a path toward fuller knowledge of the process of dreaming.
Despite much evidence, then as now, about the healing, spiritual, and even prophetic power of dreams, there is still a current school of thought that considers dream content to be the random result of neurons in the brain continuing to fire in the absence of waking experience. This stance is very familiar, with considerable evidence to support it, yet it seems to echo past arguments that dreams are merely the result of physical discomfort or indigestion. Indeed, the dream theories of today have their basis in thousands of years of belief and experience. The next chapter traces contemporary dream theory from its roots to its many branches.

 

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Chapter Three
Modern Dream Theorists Who Says What About Dreams
Contemporary dream theorists generally see things quite differently than people of previous centuries, though there are some striking echoes of the past. What mainstream dream theorists have abandoned is the ancients' belief that dreams are divinely inspired messages sent by gods to foretell the future or by demons to deceive the dreamer. No longer do they think that dreams bear no relation to the dreamer's own thoughts and experiences. And gone from the writings of modern dream theorists is the idea that dream content might undermine Christian standards of moral conduct.
Primitive societies of many origins tended to consider the content of dreams to be more significant than their waking livesnot surprising since they believed dreams to be messages from a deity. Are dream experiences more important than waking ones? Perhaps not. But there is some holdover from this ancient outlook: Although dreams may not be more important

 

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than waking life, most modern dream theorists argue, they can offer significant insight into character and conflict that our waking thoughts might miss.
As recently as the 1800s, scientists considered dreams meaningless, and blamed them on indigestion or physical discomfort such as excessive heat or cold. It is only in this century that dreams have been the focus of in-depth scientific study, with recordable data that show not only when we dream, but how and why we dream and what we dream about. And while theories still differ, and some scientists are even returning to a physiological explanation of dreams, there is new understanding that benefits all dreamers. Here is a summary of the history of twentieth-century dream theory.
Sigmund Freud
We've all heard references to the work of Sigmund Freud (18591939), the founder of psychoanalysis (the theory and therapeutic treatment of neuroses) and the first physician to see dreams as a "window to the soul." Before Freud, there had been considerable philosophical interest in dreams, but it was he who began to turn it into a science. Freud started his medical career as a neurologist, and initially sought to discover neurological causes of dreams. Finding no evidence to support this hypothesis, he turned toward psychology, studying hypnosis, which aroused his interest in looking at mental illness from a psychological rather than a physiological point of view. In time, he created a system for the individual interpretation of dreams that would change the course of dreamwork forever. As the first contemporary theorist to reexamine dreams as a wholly psychic (mental) process, Freud was a pioneer, bringing the study of dreams into the modern scientific world.

 

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Freud not only used the study of dreams in his work with his patients, but also in