Aserinsky And Klietman's Study

In addition to Freud’s idea that dreams contained repressed and unconscious desires, his dream theory was also influenced by Aristotle. Similar to Aristotle, Freud believed that dreams recreated “sense-impressions” of scenery and objects experienced when a person was awake. According to Beare (1994), Aristotle believed that when a person was asleep, they could “perceive nothing” (p.4, part 3). Despite this notion, Aristotle also suggested that it could be possible to “perceive sounds, light, savor and contact” while asleep (p.4, part 3). Freud later called these experience hallucinations. He stated that these hallucinations made people believe that everything in the dream was real. Freud used an example of his own dreams in which he stated that while he was asleep he felt thirsty. In order to quench his thirst, he

Aserinsky and Klietman (1953) found that when individuals were asleep, they exhibited “rapid, jerky and binocularly symmetrical” eye movements (p. 273). This phenomenon was later known as Rapid Eye Movement or REM. In addition to this discovery, Aserinsky and Klietman further examined the REM phenomenon with a group of twenty adult subjects. During the study, the participants were awakened once researchers observed rapid eye movements and were questioned about their dreams (Aserinsky and Klietman, 1953, p. 273). As a result, Aserinsky and Klietman discovered that participants who were awakened during “ocular motility” were better able to remember their dreams in vivid detail (Aserinsky and Klietman, 1953, p. 273). From the study, Aserinsky and Klietman (1953) concluded that the “the ability to recall dreams is significantly associated with the presence of eye movements” (p.274). In other words, when REM occurs during sleep, it is likely that a person is