A brief history of dreams
October 7, 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9781315516653-3 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Jungian analytical psychology |
| Key findings | The text argues that dreams have been culturally significant throughout history, that Freud transformed oneirology, and that current neuroscientific theories like the activation-synthesis hypothesis and the Continuity Hypothesis offer different explanations for dreaming. It also notes that the field's reliance on expensive technology limits progress and sample sizes. |
Abstract
Dreams have been integral to human culture all over the world and throughout human history. In many ancient and medieval accounts of dreaming, dreams were often seen as prophetic, gifts from the gods, communications with ancestors, or as having some other kind of religious or spiritual meaning. In the early 20th century, oneirology had a huge makeover thanks to perhaps the most famous oneirologist of them all, Sigmund Freud. One of the most influential neuroscientific theories is the activation-synthesis hypothesis. The neuroscience of dreaming is one of the youngest academic fields of oneirology and is reliant on expensive technology, which necessarily means that progress is slow, laborious, and relies on small sample sizes. The Continuity Hypothesis, conversely, states that aspects of waking life, like our thoughts, our behaviours, and our emotions, carry over dreams in very transparent, obvious ways. Jung also developed a new method of dream analysis called amplification.