PSYCHoLoGY

Psychology

[Name of the writer]

[Name of the institution]

Psychology

The primary purpose of this study was to develop a comprehensive assessment tool for measuring the incidence of dream motifs by revising some original items of the Dream Themes Inventory and incorporating new themes, such as those concerning one's relation to surrounding objects. The original scales for assessing the predispositions that are thought to modulate the narrative content of dreams were revised with consideration of both classical reliability and latent trait statistics. The new instrument, Dream Motif Scale, is distinguished by its good psychometric properties and proficiency in capturing the motifs experienced by over 90% of participants with dream recall in the night prior to taking part in this study. In addition, the dream prevalence, frequency, and recurrence profiles replicated in this study provide further substance to the universality, recurrence, and constancy of typical dream themes, and have important implications for the sleep-protection and adaptation functions of dreaming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

If dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, as Freud claimed, then that route may be a highway full of tortuous twists and turns—leading nowhere. But it affords some spectacular vistas along the way. By turns, dreams have been deemed prophecies of the future, full of meaning—if only someone could figure out what it is—or the effluence of nerve cells randomly unwinding from a busy day. once considered a hallmark of the periodic surges of brain activity known as rapid-eye-movement sleep, dreaming now seems somewhat less bundled up; at least 25 percent of dreams are scattered through other parts of the night. Dreaming has been seen as critical for learning, or at least important for solving problems—or as nice but unnecessary. It's an emblem of mental illness—or a safety shield deflecting it (Marshall, 2000).

The newest switchback on dreams comes from South African neuroscientist Mark Solms. Maybe, says Solms, we've been confusing cause and effect. Dreams, he suggests, are not a by-product of sleep, as has been assumed all along. Dreaming may be what allows us to sleep in the first place. "Dreams protect sleep," Solms says. They furnish an ersatz world to keep the brain temporarily occupied in its unyielding quest for activity. His iconoclastic view of dreams springs from emerging evidence that REM sleep and dreaming are not synonymous, and that the brain mechanisms involved in REM sleep may be entirely different from those involved in dreaming. Dreaming, in fact, is now thought to recruit areas of the brain involved in higher mental functions. In other words, dreaming does for the brain what Saturday-morning cartoons do for the kids: It keeps them sufficiently entertained so that the serious players in the household can get needed recovery time. Without such diversion, the brain would be urging us up and out into the world to keep it fully engaged. Dreams are a delusional hallucinatory state driven by activation of the brain's basic motivational system, Solms told a gathering of scientists in New York City. And like delusions, ...