[Castration attempts in the dream. Psychophysiologic research of dreams and psychoanalysis].

The author gives a brief survey on psychophysiological correlational dream studies since 1953. Early optimism of physiologists and psychoanalysts on the possibility of building bridges between psyche and soma that could further the understanding of the dream over and above the psychoanalytic contributions has largely given way to more sober considerations. The subjective side of dreams and their importance for therapeutic and maturational processes has never been the subject of psychophysiologic investigation. Its objectives did not go beyond mere correlational studies of physiological events and dream content categories. Reductionist theories of certain neurophysiologists that conceive of the dream as an epiphenomenon of physiologic arousal were followed by some psychoanalysts' reconceptualization of oniric understanding. Psychological and physiological levels of interpretation must, for lack of a superordinate framework, be strictly kept apart. Psychophysiologic dream studies have, on the whole, added little to the understanding of the dream as a significant mental product of clinical importance.