ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author suggests that the patterned neuronal activation of REM is a virtual reality program for the development and maintenance of the brain. He argues that it also functions to provide the energy balance that is needed to regulate mood. The author ascribes the ego weakness to a wrongly constructed brain with resulting dysfunction of both primary and secondary consciousness. Waking and dreaming are two states of consciousness whose phenomenological and physiological differences are now well enough understood to permit the sort of mind-brain integration that is a major goal of psychodynamic neurology. The fact that dreaming shares many features with psychosis does not mean that structural change does not contribute to the problems of major mental illness. The physical bases of psychosis are entirely normal and natural. Interference with aminergic neuromodulation, by drugs and alcohol, produces the delirium of acute organic psychosis.
