Dreaming
Conclusion and other implications of dreaming
Freud famously said, “the dream is instigated by a wish.”
The traditional psychoanalytic approach used dreams as guides to unlocking forgotten
memories of trauma, pathogenesis of neurotic symptoms and clinical disorders. And thus the
psychoanalytic treatment for a patient seeking counseling was to bring repressed memories
into a conscious state in order to study their meaning and help unlock the true needs of
his or her psyche. By the 1950’s, this approach had an important place in psychiatry. However, with the advancement of scientific research on sleep and dreaming since this time, experimenters have sought to uncover a compatible, integrated concept of dreaming as involving a biological and psychological basis.
Traditionally, dreaming was not
regarded as a purely physiological response. There was, and still is, the popular
philosophical debate of the mind/brain problem, which attempts to explain the mind in
relation to the brain. Does a mind, separate from the brain, exist? If so, what then is a
mind exactly? Does it serve as the basis of our psychology? The questions ultimately tried to recognize the mind as instrinsic to the brain. And dreams served as the means by which to accomplish this task.
Philosophers, psychologists, or anyone interested in this concept thought the best
approach was to discover the true content of the dreaming mind and explain it with respect
to the neurobiology of the dreaming brain.
Essentially, a psychobiologic view
was needed. The main problem this task
presented, however, was how to correlate the two entities. The mind consisting of
immaterial matter and the brain consisting of material/physical matter posed difficulty in developing a theory that involved the two. Eventually, emotion was suggested to serve as the connection between
mind and brain. It was believed that emotion shaped the process and content of dreams.
For example, Freud thought of the “wish” as a physiological motivator, not as an immaterial mental
abstraction. The wish represented a biological need and it was the mind's task to ensure that this need was fulfilled. The mind was to recognize what was involved with meeting the need, such as bodily sensations, knowing and remembering what exactly is required to meet the need and energizing the various parts of the body to accomplish the task. This notion provided us with a psychobiological glimpse of dreaming.
Largely in attempt to provide
dreaming with a biological basis, researchers came up with the activation-synthesis
hypothesis. For years, authors have refuted this purely physiological explanation of
dreaming. To clarify, the activation portion states that during REM sleep, the brain is in
an activated state and electrical impulses stimulate the higher midbrain and forebrain
cortical centers. This process leads to the synthesis portion of the model. The energy
produces REM sleep and spreads activation over the associated cortex, which causes memory
traces to be stored. The images do not convey meaning, but they are given meaning and constructed into a story in attempt to make sense of them. (Go to Dreaming as a purely physiological response) This theory refused to involve a psychobiologic view, and instead ruled psychology out altogether. One particular refute to this
theory is that altered levels in aminergic and cholinergic activity in the pons, a brain structure located in brain stem known for its relay of information to other areas of the brain, produces
REM sleep. This theory is strictly biological. It, therefore, doesn’t
explain how the changes in the pons could produce complicated and subjective dreams. A
brain state can’t explain a mental state. In other words, REM sleep cannot be
considered synonymous with the dream.
Another modern opinion on the topic
of dreaming is one that asserts REM sleep and dreaming can occur independently of each
other. One study reported
patients with lesions to the pons and the subsequent loss REM sleep. It determined that
one of 26 patients didn’t experience dreaming while other patients reported that they
dreamed, although they didn’t experience REM sleep. A few dream researchers refute this study in that persons with lesions to the pons wouldn’t be conscious enough
to report on dreams and therefore the results of this study are inconclusive.
The “curiosity-interest-expectancy
command system” is yet another theory proposed for dreaming. Originating in the
ventromedial forebrain, this system initiates dreaming and provides dreams with emotion and meaning. The system is found in an area of high activity during REM sleep. Currently, it is not understood how the two brain structures most commonly known to be involved with dreaming, the pontine and the forebrain, work together to ignite emotionally meaninfully dreaming. However, the view allows for psychological involvement in understanding dreaming and also poses a convincing argument against the activation-synthesis model of dreaming.
Other research proposed that emotional life experiences become registered in memory as the experience is happening. The experiences are thought to be registered as precepts, or sensory guidelines. Basically, the theory states that
dream images and content both relate to memory function.
The sensory guidelines regulate and control the encoding of these emotion-filled
memories. The guidelines later appear as
images in dreams and thus serve as references to the meaningful experiences. This theory
incorporates both a biological and psychological basis for dreaming. Moreover, it is yet another theory that draws us closer to striking compatibility between psychology and biology in understanding the process and significance of dreaming.