Idealogian

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Dreams Ride on Freud's Royal Road, Study Finds

"Not surprisingly, any kind of thinking about something increases the likelihood that it will show up in a dream," said Dr. Daniel M. Wegner, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author of the study. "But trying to suppress something increases the chances even more, indicating that the meanings of our dreams involve things we've tried to sweep under the rug."

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As a result, studies show, people who try to quit smoking have dreams about cigarettes, or an actor who is gearing up for a big show has nightmares about going blank on stage. Going to bed lifts the lid on all the thoughts that the mind keeps under wraps.

"A lot of the things we dream about tend to be negative, because they're the things we're most likely to deliberately keep out of our minds," Dr. Wegner said. "It's often the most awful things we can think about that we crowd into our dreams."

Concerted efforts to block things, experts say, give them special value and can have the unintended effect of making them more memorable.

In a study several years ago, for example, Dr. Wegner showed somewhat paradoxically that telling people not to think about a white bear made them obsessed with that very thought. In the courtroom, other researchers have found, telling a jury to disregard a witness's testimony can actually increase its influence.

"If you're suppressing thoughts about someone, you're telling your brain it's more important than the shirt you wore or what you had for lunch," said Dr. Robert A. Stickgold, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study. "It's probably one of a hundred ways that material gets tagged for dreams."

Thanks for the link, Dad!