A New Beginning for Empirical Dream Research

Abstract

William Domhoff's The Scientific Study of Dreams breaks new ground in the field, not by proposing grandiose, premature answers to questions about the nature of dreams but rather by showing us with unprecedented clarity and scope where we have erred in the past and allowing us to start over again. In a careful, reasoned critique, Domhoff demonstrates the shortcomings of the dominant dream theories that haunted the last century. Based on a thorough examination of converging evidence from neurophysiological, cognitive, and content analysis approaches to the study of dreams, he then lays the groundwork for the construction of future theories of the dreaming process from a neurocognitive perspective. Although a new, complete theory is not presented here, its insightful and unbiased as sessment of where dream research stands at this time should make The Scientific Study of Dreams required reading for everyone interested an empirical approach to understanding dreaming. With the publication of Freud's Interpretation ofDreamsin 1900, popular thought about the nature of dreams became centered around the idea that our dreams are disguised wishes originating from unconscious influences in early childhood. Dreams allowed us to hallucinatorily gratify socially unacceptable wishes repressed in our unconscious, and the transformative process of dreamwork ensured that these themes were well enough disguised in our dream content to allow us to sleep through the night, without being startled awake. Until the early 1950s, this psychoanalytic conception dominated dream psychology and was explored largely using the same techniques of clinical observation that led Freud to the formula tion of his original theory. The modem era of empirical research on dreaming was kicked off in the 1950s with Aserinsky and Kleitman's (1953) groundbreaking discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. As a graduate student working on a summer project, Eugene Aserinsky serendipitously discovered that about every 90 min throughout the night, humans go through short periods during which their eyes dart back and forth underneath their eyelids, accompanied by dramatic increases in brain activity as measured by electroencephalography. Soon it was reported that sub jects were much more likely to report a dream when awakened from REM sleep