ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the ways in which drug dreams can offer a good methodological and conceptual dream framework for the study of the motivational determinants of dreaming and in support of the studies on the effects of biological drive frustration on dreams. It is widely known that for a long time the study of the role of motivations in dreaming processes has received, with rare exceptions, very little attention in the classic psycho-physiological dream research and theory. The phenomenon of drug dreams, in particular their function of discharging craving pressure, is somehow compatible with the emotional adaptive theory of dreaming in its different versions, as well as with "emotional–motivational" hypotheses about the function of sleep and dreams. The chapter suggests that the case of drug dreams supports and strengthens the biological drive frustration paradigm. J. Money observed that the dreams of a group of twenty-one paraplegics suffering from total paralysis of the genito-pelvic area contained images of sexual orgasm.
