Dreaming and the neurobiology of self: recent advances and implications for psychiatry

Throughout most of the 20th century, dreaming was considered at the center of the leading psychotherapeutic approaches to mental disorders. Psychodynamic models of the mind stemmed from Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, according to which knowledge of the unconscious foundations of most symptoms could be enhanced by an accurate evaluation of reported dreams. Toward the end of the century, these conceptualizations were challenged by a progressive shift of perspective in the direction of neurobiologically informed, mechanistic models of brain dysfunction. The diffusion of effective psychotropic medications developed to target specific symptoms across different disorders contributed to…