![]() Kramer's 12 experiments indicate that dream content is linked to waking, pre-sleep emotional concerns and is predictive of the mood of the dreamer on the subsequent morning. Palombo 15 views REM sleep or dreaming as a vehicle for matching and storing recent memories with those from the past for the purpose of integration and adaptability. Greenberg and Pearlman's 9, 10 research suggests that the manifest dream represents the dreamer's attempt to cope with meaningful issues and problems. 5 – 10 Koulack 5 points out that stressful experiences are incorporated into dream content in order to promote mastery. A number of investigators emphasize the adaptational, learning, and problem-solving functions of dreaming. Reiser 4 observes that current and past conflicts or problems, derived from memory, are reflected in dream images and are connected by similar affects. In addition, there is selective activation of occipital, parietal, and limbic regions along with excitation of cholinergic neurons and inhibition of noradrenergic as well as serotonergic neurons. 11, 13, 14 This consists of excitation of forebrain circuits due to activation of the pontine and midbrain reticular activating systems. Neurophysiological studies indicate that dreaming occurs when the brain is activated during REM sleep. Subsequent to Freud's observations, a multitude of sleep laboratory and clinical studies have suggested that the dream and/or REM sleep is an inborn biological phenomenon designed to facilitate memory processing, problem-solving, mood regulation, and psychological adaptability. Freud believed that the dream was a mental phenomenon designed to censor biological impulses and unconscious wishes in order to preserve sleep. I am referring to the dream, a singularly subjective mental experience that Freud 2 began investigating over a century ago in order to understand unconscious mentation.ĭuring the one hundred years since Freud published his original hypothesis, our understanding of the function of dreaming has changed significantly. Yet there does exist a time-tested psychodynamically informative instrument that I believe is as qualitatively reliable as any current psychometric evaluation, PET scan, or neurotransmitter measurement. These correlates include feelings, percepts, memories, wishes, fantasies, conflicts, impulses, and defenses, as well as images of self and others. ![]() As technologically sophisticated as we have become, we still lack a reliable measurement of self-experience that is, a diagnostic instrument designed to assess the subjective correlates of brain activity, both conscious and unconscious. Nevertheless, as exciting and informative as these neurobiological tests are, they remain within the realm of objective biological measurements of brain function and activity. During the period described as the “decade of the brain,” 1 psychiatry began utilizing neuroimaging techniques and neuroendocrine measurements that have provided us with relevant information about brain functioning. Unique among the medical and psychiatric treatment modalities, psychoanalysis and psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy do not make use of laboratory tests or measuring devices for diagnostic purposes.
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