From Reality to Dreams I: Stress and Anxiety
While Sigmund Freud (1900/1990) originally wrote about the wish-fulfilling aspects of dream functioning, there appear to be many dreams that are addressing a much more immediate and basic function. They are addressing the impending threat that we have experienced prior to falling asleep.
Impending Threat
Many years ago, I was involved tangentially in a major study of stress and dreams. I helped to set up one of the first dream labs in the United States at the University of Oregon, in Eugene Oregon. This lab was under the supervision of Louis Breger and Les Davidson. A second temporary lab was set up at a hospital in Portland Oregon. This second lab was placed in this hospital so that patients waiting to undergo surgery would graciously agree to have their dreams recorded before and after they were “going under the knife.” Specifically (Breger, Hunter and Lane, 1971, p. 101):
“Five subjects scheduled to undergo major surgery were selected for intensive study by means of interviews, psychological tests, rating scales and behavioral observation. Their dreams were collected by EEG-REM methods on four consecutive nights before their operations and during a relatively less stressful three-day postoperative period.”
What better occasion for studying the impact of waking life on dreams than to collect dreams when there is the impending threat of surgery. There is rarely an anticipated event that is potentially just as impactful. We will get injured from a fall or from a knife cutting our skin; however, these intrusive events are usually not anticipated; surgery, on the other hand, is an intrusive event that we choose in most instances to allow in our life. Breger, Hunter and Lane found that the dreams collected prior to elective surgery were often filled with imagery and themes that relate in some way to that which is about to occur. Furthermore, the dreams often displayed a unique way in which each of the people being studied were preparing unconsciously for the surgery.
Breger and his colleagues (Breger, Hunter and Lane, 1971, p. 178) offer these brief descriptions of distinctive dream strategies engaged by three of their subjects:
“For Al, the impending operation represented the threat of reduced mobility and surrender to his desire to be taken care of. In his dreams these threats were symbolized by objects or people whose mobility was obstructed, and by themes which expressed conflict about being dependent on others. In Penny’s case, the prospect of hospitalization and surgery aroused some fear of parental abandonment, and intensified her conflict about becoming independent. Accordingly, over half of her preoperative dreams depicted the main character in the act of leaving. In Melvin, the anticipation of surgery aroused neurotic fears of losing his strength, his masculinity, and his sources of nurturant support; and over half of his preoperative dreams contained references to losses-including the danger of objects or people losing their physical support and falling-and to bodily defects and inadequacies.”
The three authors (Breger, Hunter and Lane, 1971, p. 178) went further in suggesting that:
“The fears and conflicts symbolized in the dreams rarely appeared without an attempt to resolve or cope with them in some way. Each subject’s attempts at defense in his dreams were consistent with his waking style. Attempts at solution were represented most clearly in the subject’s interactions and roles as a dream character.”
This finding is particularly noteworthy. These preliminary findings suggest that there is not an independent style of defense and coping that operates during the dream as compared to that operating during the daytime.
Between Day and Night
If we were to bring in French and Fromm’s (1964) model of dream work as the dreamer’s attempt to resolve focal conflicts in their life, then we might propose, given these surgery findings, that attempts during waking hours to address focal conflict might be similar in scope and character to the approach taken in one’s dreams.
