ABSTRACT
The fact that dreams have story formats was noticed by C. G. Jung when proposing that “there are a great many ‘average’ dreams in which a definite structure can be perceived, not unlike that of a drama”. The one part of dreams that appears to have been located by neuroscientific research is the storyline. The fact that dreams appear to be a mostly involuntary part of sleep has led to a great deal of speculation about their function in our overall mental life. One of the few ways to explore the specific neuroanatomy of dreaming has been to study patients with brain lesions and how these lesions affect dreaming. One of the surprising discoveries in David Foulkes’s extensive research on children’s dreams is that dreaming may not be present at birth, at least not in what can be recorded using electroencephalography and identifying REM periods of sleep. The stages of remembering do not preclude signs of psychopathology in patients’ dreams.
