reud's quote stated in the beginning, by analyzing dreams one can take a step forward in our understanding of the composition of that most mysterious of all instruments. Only a small step forward will enable us to proceed further with its analysis. (Freud, pg. 589 & 608 ) The unconscious is the true psychical reality, in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented, as is the communications of our sense organ. There is of course no question that dreams give us knowledge for the future. But it would be truer to say instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For dreams are derived from the past in every sense. Nevertheless the ancient belief that dreams foretell the future is not false. (Freud, pg. 662) By picturing our wishes as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading us into the future. But the future, which the dreamer pictures as the present, has been molded by his indestructible wish into a perfect likeness of the past. ( Palombo, M.D, 1986 )Although there has been some descriptive study of the incidence and character of feeling in REM dreaming, there has been no investigation of the appropriateness of dream feelings to accompany dream imagery. It has been suggested that, the generation of affect in dreaming may not be as reliable as the generation of other forms of dream imagery. Dream affect generally seems to be consistent with the larger narrative context of the dreams. (David Foulkes & Brenda Sullivan, 1988) Research by Cohen and Wolfe has shown that a simple distraction in the morning had a strong negative effect on dream recall. The study concerned a variable relatively neglected in dream research, the level of interest the subjects have about their dreams. One finding was that interest in dreams appeared to vary with sex: woman reported that they more frequently speculated their dreams and discussed them with other people than did men. These d...
