ANAHEIM, Calif.-January 24, 1999-For much of this century, the fields of neuroscience and psychoanalysis typically have differed greatly in their theories on dreams. Beginning in the mid-1960s, though, an effort has been under way to promote an integration of scientific and clinical dream research to further the understanding of dream function and purpose.
Ramon Greenberg, MD, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Mental Health Center, believes much can be gained scientifically by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to dream research. "While dreams have been of interest to humans since antiquity, our understanding of dreams has varied over the years," Greenberg says. "Combining what we now know both physiologically about the brain and sleep and psychologically about dreams will shed new light on how to work with dreams in a therapeutic manner."
Greenberg will address an interdisciplinary approach to dream research at a press briefing on Sunday, January 24, 3:00 pm at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim, Calif.
Much debate on the function and purpose of dreams has focused on Freud's theory that dreams serve the purpose of both discharging and disguising unconscious drives. Neuroscientists, believing that dreams are a result of random brain activity, traditionally have questioned the psychoanalytic theory that dreams are affected by a person's emotional state.
Greenberg believes-and other researchers concur-that studying all aspects of the processes that contribute to dreaming, including sleep physiology, anatomy, REM sleep studies, and dream-content analysis, will result in a more comprehensive scientific understanding of dreams.
"It is important that our laboratory data be taken into account in our psychological theories, and our physiologic findings need to be interpreted with due consideration of psychologic realities," Greenberg says. "Current data leads to a theory consistent both with laboratory data and modern psychoanalytic thinking namely that dreams can be understood in relation to the function of REM sleep. That function is the integration of new information into the memory systems in the service of adaptation."