Читать книгу Sleep: The secret to sleeping well and waking refreshed - Prof. Idzikowski Chris - Страница 35

Although he originally trained as a doctor, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is best known for his study of the mind, and is often referred to as the father of psychoanalysis. Freud believed that the mind consisted of three main elements: the ego (the conscious self), the superego (the mind’s moral guardian) and the id (psychic and unconscious mental energy), and that the demands of the id, left unchecked during sleep, were expressed in dreams.

In Freud’s psychodynamic theory, dreams symbolized unconscious thoughts and mental processes, and interpreting their meaning was a ‘royal road’ to understanding the subconscious mind. One of Freud’s contemporaries, Carl Jung (1865-1961), formulated the idea of the ‘collective unconscious’ (a reservoir of memories and experiences), his list of the many recurring themes in dreams including: water, being trapped, travelling, running, being chased, death, choking, falling, houses, flying, nudity, being late and sex.

Freud’s influence on psychiatric thought has now largely declined, but his book The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) remains one of the most significant works of the 20th century.

REM sleep has often been described as paradoxical because it has many contradictions. Although EEG readings show that the brain is so active at this time that it may be using even more energy than during wakefulness, the muscles, by contrast, are completely paralyzed, apart from rapid eye movements and the odd, involuntary twitching of fingers. Since vivid dreams also occur at this time, some people believe the muscle paralysis is there to stop the dreams from being physically acted out.