ABSTRACT
Perhaps no facet of sleep has attracted more attention or been the source of more speculation than dreaming. Interest in dreams as portents of the future was not limited to the Egyptians. The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews also believed that dreams were important predictors of future events and dream interpretation was a highly valued skill in their cultures. The dream appears both as a product and a resolution of this psychic conflict between instinctual forces on the one hand and the repressive forces of consciousness on the other. In addition to providing some evidence for a relationship between dream time and real time, the stimulation technique also permitted the examination of some of the parameters of commerce with the environment during sleep. There is a possibility the specific effects of the stimulus were transposed to the other in dream in order to rob stimulus of some of its significance to the dreamer and thus permit him to continue sleeping.
