If dreams are intended to satisfy some primitive wish, such as Freud (1900/1990) suggests, to resolve some core conflict in one’s life (French and Fromm, 1964), or simply to entertain us (Bergquist, 2022), then they are doing a lousy job when it comes to the production of nightmares. These horrific dreams are satisfying no wishes, solving no problems, or providing no entertainment (unless we consider horror movies to be “entertaining”). When it comes to nightmares, it is hard to even declare that dreams are merely a random clustering of neutral firings. Nightmares are much to tightly knitted and much to compelling to be considered in any way “random.” As Mack declares, nightmares are about profound and inescapable anxieties and conflict that are masterfully crafted by our dream-maker “to scare the living (or not so-living) daylights out of us”.
Given these challenges associated with determining the function served (or not served) by nightmares, what might a theory of nightmares look like. John Mack offers several criteria. According to Mack (1970, pp. 205-206). any theory of nightmares must:
“. . . take into account [the] fact that nightmares—or at least awakening from an apparently fearful hallucinatory experience—can occur in children of about one year of age whom the development of psychic structure has advanced very little. Also, it must explain how such severely disturbing dreams can take place, not only in emotionally disturbed individuals, but also in persons who otherwise appear to function well or give little or no evidence of being anxious, troubled, or especially “neurotic” during waking life. The theory must be consistent with the widespread occurrence of nightmares and therefore be applicable to persons of other cultures. including primitive societies, who seem to have no immunity from such disturbing dreams.”
At this point, Mack (1970, p. 206) offers a particularly intriguing finding regarding non-REM sleep:
“We need also to consider the fact that, unlike other dreams or mental phenomena that occur during sleep, the most severe nightmares seem to take place in non-REM periods rather than during REM periods, of which dreaming is regarded as more characteristic. Finally, our explanations must account for the fundamental clinical characteristics shared by nightmares at any age: the feelings of helpless-ness and powerlessness, the perception of severe danger, the overwhelming or life-and-death quality of anxiety and, finally, the threat or actual presence in the dream of violence and destructiveness.”
In formulating his own theory of nightmares, Mack returns to the insights offered by Sigmund Freud later in his career. First, as Freud noted (and later ego psychologists confirmed), a child is confronted with ongoing anxiety while navigating a life with big people, big threats, and little ability to defend oneself. There is a strong sense of powerlessness that is only overcome later in life when the child becomes a competent (and BIG) adult. The nightmare might return the dreamer to this earlier, vulnerable state.
Mack (1970, p. 212) relates this childhood experience of powerlessness to the regression that may be occurring in our nightmares:
“Ego-regression may contribute to the intensity of anxiety in nightmares and especially to the quality of utter helplessness that is usually experienced in those dreams. It appears as if, in the nightmare, the ego state that once accompanied childhood fears is revived along with the fears themselves. Thus, even the adult nightmare victim confronts his nemesis, not as the competent person he may actually have become, but as the small and helpless child surrounded by a world of large people and dangerous forces that he perceives in much the same way as he did the earlier period when they confronted him daily with his powerlessness.”
