MYSTERY OF DREAMING: THREE KINDS OF DREAMS
Medical Research Archives January 1, 2025 A.M.L. Coenen
Dreaming remains a mysterious process that is difficult for science to examine. Early research by Mary Calkins found that most dreams reflect daily life, leading to the continuity hypothesis, later refined by Calvin Hall and Robert Van de Castle. Rosalind Cartwright shifted focus toward dreams' role in emotion regulation. Freud's psychoanalytic theory linked dreams to adolescent psychoses. In 1953, Aserinsky and Kleitman discovered REM sleep, associated with vivid dreams. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley proposed the activation-synthesis hypothesis based on brain activation during REM. A third type, hypnagogic hallucinations, has recently been shown to have creative qualities.