Effect of an Erotic Movie on the Sleep and Dreams of Young Men

Abstract

THIS STUDY is concerned with the question of dream formation. Where do these nightly images come from and what is their relation to waking perceptions? Although many dream elements are recognized as familiar to us from our reality experience, they usually appear in new and often incongruous amalgams. These transformations do not seem to take place under the same laws as govern the changes in the reproductions of recalled visual stimuli during wakefulness. Dream images are not simpler, more familiar, or more stereotyped than the original. Unfortunately, what images from wakefulness are incorporated into our dreams and how and why they are changed cannot be conceptualized primarily as a problem in retention. Dreams have, in addition to their visual properties, affective components. These make the problem of understanding the dream-formation process at least partly one of discovering the laws governing how perceptions are