The neurobiological origins of psychoanalytic dream theory

Abstract

Freud built his model of the mind and his hypotheses about dreaming directly on the structure of his neurobiological model of the brain, which was developed in the "Project for a Scientific Psychology", written in 1895. Among the concepts modeled in this work were ego, somatic drives as motivationally critical, cathexes of psychic energy, wish fulfillment, and primary and secondary process. From the vantage point of more than 80 years later, the authors indicate the areas in which many of Freud's neurobiological assumptions are inacurrate. Revisions are needed in the neurobiologically derived psychoanalytic concepts, especially those of Freud's wish fulfillment-disguise theory of dreams.