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Sigmund Freud’s views on the meaning ofdreams formed the core of his theory ofmental functioning. Mark Solms andothers assert that brain imaging andlesion studies are now validating Freud’sconception of the mind. But similarscientific investigations show that majoraspects of Freud’s thinking are probablyerroneous.

For Freud, the bizarre nature ofdreams resulted from an elaborate effortof the mind to conceal, by symbolicdisguise and censorship, the unacceptableinstinctual wishes welling up from theunconscious when the ego relaxes itsprohibition of the id in sleep. But mostneurobiological evidence supports thealternative view that dream bizarrenessstems from normal changes in brainstate. Chemical mechanisms in the brainstem, which shift the activation of variousregions of the cortex, generate thesechanges. Many studies have indicatedthat the chemical changes determine thequality and quantity of dream visions,emotions and thoughts. Freud’s disguise-and-censorship notion must be discarded;no one believes that the ego-id struggle, ifit exists, controls brain chemistry. Mostpsychoanalysts no longer hold that thedisguise-censorship theory is valid.

Without disguise and censorship,what is left of Freud’s dream theory? Notmuch—only that instinctual drives couldimpel dream formation. Evidence doesindicate that activating the parts of thelimbic system that produce anxiety, angerand elation shapes dreams. But theseinfluences are not “wishes.” Dreamanalyses show that the emotions indreams are as often negative as they arepositive, which would mean that half our“wishes” for ourselves are negative. And asall dreamers know, the emotions in dreamsare hardly disguised. They enter intodream plots clearly, frequently bringingunpleasant effects such as nightmares.Freud was never able to account for whyso many dream emotions are negative.

Another pillar of Freud’s model is thatbecause the true meaning of dreams ishidden, the emotions they reflect can berevealed only through his wild-goose-

chase method of free association, inwhich the subject relates anything andeverything that comes to mind in hopesof stumbling across a crucial connection.But this effort is unnecessary, becauseno such concealment occurs. In dreams,

what you see is what you get. Dreamcontent is emotionally salient on its face,and the close attention of dreamers andtheir therapists is all that is needed tosee the feelings they represent.

Solms and other Freudians intimatethat ascribing dreams to brain chemistryis the same as saying that dreams haveno emotional messages. But thestatements are not equivalent. Thechemical activation-synthesis theory ofdreaming, put forth by Robert W.McCarley of Harvard Medical School andme in 1977, maintained only that thepsychoanalytic explanation of dreambizarreness as concealed meaning waswrong. We have always argued thatdreams are emotionally salient andmeaningful. And what about REM sleep?New studies reveal that dreams can occur

during non-REM sleep, but nothing in thechemical activation model precludes thiscase; the frequency of dreams is simplyexponentially higher during REM sleep.

Psychoanalysis is in big trouble, andno amount of neurobiological tinkering

can fix it. So radical an overhaul isnecessary that many neuroscientistswould prefer to start over and create aneurocognitive model of the mind.Psychoanalytic theory is indeedcomprehensive, but if it is terribly in error,then its comprehensiveness is hardly avirtue. The scientists who share this viewstump for more biologically based modelsof dreams, of mental illness, and ofnormal conscious experience than thoseoffered by psychoanalysis.

J. Allan Hobson, professor of psychiatryat Harvard Medical School, has writtenextensively on the brain basis of the mindand its implications for psychiatry. Formore, see Hobson’s book Dreaming: AnIntroduction to the Science of Sleep(Oxford University Press, 2003).

FREUD RETURNS? LIKE A BAD DREAMBy J. Allan Hobson

COUNTERPOINT

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