Physiologists have long wondered at the function of sleep besides its obvious physical recuperative function.
The dream state in which the brain experiences a burst of activity in Rapid Eye Movements(REM) shows that sleep is not simply about rest (not, at least, for the brain, if for the body).
Sleep represents a significant regression of the Ego; and what is termed the dream Ego in dream consciousness shows adaptations significantly divergent from the waking-state Ego.
That every adult individual looks forward to the end-of-day bedtime event of temporary Ego regression in sleep and dream, and that REM sleep deprivation has been found to have significant psychophysiological effect on the individual indicates that sleep, particularly REM sleep can be compared to a car pulling up at the service station at regular mileage intervals.
Freud recognized two main types of dream, the wish and the anxiety dreams.
The wish dream employs symbolic representations of the womb while the anxiety dream employs symbolic representations of the birth trauma.
A wish dream may be a sexual wish dream expressed as sexual fantasy or an incest wish dream.
Freud maintained that enuresis at the sexual stage of development of the individual is an indication of an incest wish.
A wish dream could also come in the form of an indulgence dream as in the case of Hansel and Gretel feeding on a chocolate cake house.
Anxiety dreams on the other hand involve representations of the birth trauma.
Anxiety dreams come in different forms.
In the persecution form the dreamer is chased by monsters (compare the persecutory dreams of Dumuzi, the ancient Babylonian dying and resurrection deity; and also Osiris' persecutory dreams reported to his mother-consort Isis).
An anxiety dream may involve sensations of physical inhibition such as asphyxiation and a feeling of being pressed down (asphyxiation and dyspnea are associated by psychoanalysts with the "strangulation" of passage through the birth canal, especially in difficult labor).
Students and scholars often express the anxiety dream in the form of the examination dream.
Yet another form of anxiety dream, especially among individuals with pronounced birth trauma effect is that in which the individual finds himself naked or under clothed in a public place with the uncomfortable awareness of a long distance to traverse to privacy.
Similarly, dreams of falling down a deep hole or flying are interpreted as birth trauma dreams (flying as a wish dream for easy delivery).
Freud reported a particularly bizarre form of sexual wish dream in which a young man had dream-fantasies of spying on his parents' sexual activities in the intrauterine state.
The same patient had complained of the world seeming to him disguised by a veil (which Freud traced back to the fact that the young man had been born in a birth caul).
Freud interpreted the young man's fantasies as "rebirth fantasies" and viewed his "spying out" fantasy as an expression of the Oedipus Complex (i.
e.
the father's sexual intrusion on his mother libido fixation).
Interpretation of dream symbolism is, of course, a controversial aspect of psychoanalytic theory but psychoanalysts base their pattern of interpretation on what is known to them about the incidence of Birth Trauma unconscious symbolism from clinical experience and from analysis of universal symbols in human religious and mystical lore.