ABSTRACT
There is surprisingly little research on the significance of dreaming in the fields of developmental psychology and neurobiology. In the study of dreaming, observable data has to be derived from the retrospective account of the subject, the dreamer. The most important findings were that the ability to remember dreams was correlated with gender, creativity, and quality of sleep. Dreams that can be recounted by the dreamer can only appear after the neurobiological and developmental function systems of symbolisation and narrative ability have matured. If dreaming represents a regression to early processes of thinking and remembering, then young children are necessarily close to this stage of development and therefore their modes of thinking in dreaming and in reality are not very far removed from one another. The starting point of dreaming can be any stimulation of the brain during sleep. The activation of the motivational system necessary for dreaming is a response to the stimulus that first arouses the sleeping brain.
