ABSTRACT
Young children absorbed in their activities are very close to their preconscious and this makes it easy for them to talk about or demonstrate their dreams. Dreams help to show the connection with the object and to maintain a protection against the fear of an omnipotent maternal figure. Night terrors are not dreams. They point to what is missing and thus to what it takes for a person to be able to dream. Night terrors do not take place in sleep, though they are initiated out of it, but in a dissociated state characterised by a waking alpha rhythm during which the subject is disoriented and may be delusional or hallucinating. Some children never attain the ability because of a lack of containment of their disorganised and often traumatising experiences. D. W. Winnicott wrote: Dreams play a central part in the process of the working through of emotional experiences.
