Primary Texts about Neurology

-"The first major breakthrough came in 1953, when Aserinsky and Kleitman discovered a physiological state which occurs periodically (in 90 minute cycles) throughout sleep, and occupies approximately 25% of our sleeping hours. This state is characterised, amongst other things, by heightened brain activation, bursts of rapid eye movement (REM), increased breathing and heart rate, genital engorgement and paralysis of bodily movement. It consists, in short, in a paradoxical physiological condition in which one is simultaneously highly aroused and yet fast asleep."

http://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/solms4.htm

-"How dreams are generated, and what purpose they might serve, are completely open questions at this point. These results describe for the first time in detail the extent of lesion necessary to produce loss of dreaming in the absence of other neurological deficits. As such, they offer a target for further study of the localization of dreaming," said author Claudio L. Bassetti, M.D., of the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Zurich in Switzerland.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040913092356.htm

2)  You are Conscious in Dreams

 Dreams represent a sleeping state of consciousness.  Centers that arouse consciousness (sites 1 and 2) become active.  Also, the same centers in the brain that process and perceive much of our waking space are active as well (sites  5, 7, 8). Thus, in our dreams we perceive that we are awake. Foulkes ^{cited in 67} argues that dreams are little more than waking consciousness stripped of most sensory input and freed from the obligation of making coherent connections to the external world.  We are not in quite the same state of consciousness as when awake, but we are consciously viewing and moving around in a dream space, which we believe to be real.  

4)  Your Will is Absent or Diminished

 This inactive logic center of our sleeping brain (site A) is also the seat of our will, plus decisions and actions based on will.  Therefore in our dreams we generally don’t think to control our actions or the storyline of the dream, even though the dream is all created within our own mind.  We tend to exist as just a character in the dream, which is reacting to, subject to, or following the plot of the dream.  The possible exception is lucid dreaming, in which control is possible, but is not always total, and generally lasts for only a short time according to LaBerge.^{cited in 39}  The knowledge that the dream is not subject to the will of the ego is beneficial to dreamworking.  The characters in the dream, which represent feelings, beliefs, disconnected fragments of our personality, threatening emotional memories etc., are free to express their nature in the dream outside the influence of our will.  

http://www.dreamscience.org/idx_science_of_dreaming_section-3.htm




-"According to Freud, dreams always have a manifest and latent content.  The manifest content is what the dream seems to be saying. It is often bizarre and nonsensical.  The latent content is what the dream is really trying to say. Dreams give us a look into our unconscious."

http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/freud2.htm

-"Alfred Adler (1870 -1937) believes that dreams are an important tool to mastering control over your waking lives. They are problem-solving devices."

http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/