Infantile Dream Reports in Patients with Frontal Deficits
Claudio Colace, Paolo Salotti, Mila Ferreira
Sleep and Hypnosis: A Journal of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychopathology 2019;21(4):321-327
The neuropsychologicalstudy of dreaming, through the use of the clinical-anatomical method, isbased on the observation of people who have modified their way of dreamingfollowing a deficit in a certain area of brain. This approach has proved usefulin investigating different aspects of dream processes. Some initialneuropsychological observations have suggested an infantile way of dreaming, i.e. presence of direct wish-fulfilmentdreams with absence of “bizarre” elements in dream contents, in patients withfrontal deficits., Infantile dreamsare typically described in preschool children, and are attributed to theincomplete development of the ego and superego functions. From thisperspective, the presence of infantile dreams in patients with frontal deficitshas been interpreted as the result of dysfunctionsof certain executive functions involved in ego and superego activities (e.g.,executive tasks of the ego, adaptation to reality, self-regulation of emotionaland social behaviour, inhibition) that may have determined a return to the most“primordial” mode of dreaming. This study supports these interpretations byconfirming the presence of infantiledreams in a sample of 10 patients with frontal deficits through theanalysis of their dream report transcriptions of the "last dream theyremembered to have had".
Keywords:
Neuropsychology; Neuropsychoanalysis; Infantile dreams; dreaming processes; Freudian dream theory.