Continued Importance of Dreams

Science Times, The New York Times
July 10, 2007
Letters
Of Dreams and Liberation

To the Editor:

Re "Winding Through 'Big Dreams' Are the Threads of Our Lives" (July 3):
I am delighted to see Rebecca Cathcart's article on "Big Dreams" in
Science Times. She gives voice to the point of view that dreams can be
symbolic of the dreamer's emotional struggles and that dreams may
reflect a "poetic creativity" about one's remembered experience.

This is a most useful antidote to much of the current "scientific" views
about dreaming, which emphasize more the idea of random neuron firing as
the basis of dreaming. I appreciate the reference to Carl Jung, a major
pioneer in understanding dreams, whose work remains valuable. I would
add that many psychoanalytic clinicians and researchers have never
stopped seeing dreams as representations of "our concerns and emotions,"
and that Sigmund Freud's work on dreams also remains contemporaneously
pertinent.

Warren R. Procci, M.D.
Pasadena, Calif.