Dreaming
Birkhäuser Boston eBooks 1988 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4899-6771-8_12 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Citations | 43 |
| Key points | Argues that dreaming's five characteristic features—hallucinations, delusions, cognitive abnormalities, emotional intensification, and amnesia—make it comparable to abnormal waking states in schizophrenia and organic syndromes, and proposes that the neurobiology of dreaming offers a model approach to studying mental illness, with sleep laboratory techniques enabling more systematic, psychophysiologically integrated research. |
Abstract
Dreaming is a distinctive mental state that occurs periodically in normal human sleep. Typical dream reports include such psychological features as hallucinations, delusions, cognitive abnormalities, emotional intensification, and amnesia. These five remarkable features of dreaming have invited its comparison to abnormal states of mind occurring during waking in certain clinical conditions, especially schizophrenia and organic syndromes. The exploration of the neurobiological basis of dreaming therefore constitutes not only an aspect of mind-body interaction but also a model approach to the study of mental illness. An obvious problem is that the unconfirmable nature of all subjective experience is compounded by difficult access to the mind in sleep. The recent development of sleep laboratory techniques has given the study of dreaming a more instrumental and systematic character, and the emerging picture encourages psychophysiological integration.