XXII Read the text, consider the facts described and draw your conclusion. Dreams

The fact that it is more difficult to awaken a person from REM than from NREM sleep provides some initial support for Freud's idea that dreams protect sleep. An additional partial test of the Freudian theory is to deprive (лишать) subjects of REM sleep, thus depriving them of dreams. If subjects arc-awakened every time there is an onset of REM, they have a night's sleep without dreams. Early experiments indicated that after such deprivation there was more REM sleep the following night, indicating that there is a kind of "quota" for REM; and when there is less REM sleep one night, more will be required the next. Indirectly, this would support the Freudian theory of dreams as a protector of sleep. However, other findings of sleep and dream studies contradict the interpretation of REM as a protector of sleep. In the first place, REM is prominent (заметный) in infants, when meaningfull dreams are unlikely to occur, and also in lower mammals (млекопитающие). The study of the dreams of older children shows that their dreams reflect the realistic activities of their waking lives and that emotional disturbances occur in their dreams when there are emotional disturbances in their waking lives (Foulkes, 1971).

The only conclusion to be drawn is that the psycho-physiological studies of dreams have given little support to the Freudian theory that the purpose of dreams is to protect sleep.

But from the work done so far, it appears that dreaming serves several cognitive functions: it is measurably involved in mood changes; it seems to provide the energy space for working out problems set aside through days filled with busy activity; and, in general, it offers a kind of workshop for the repair of self-esteem (чувство собственного достоинства) and competence.