Which famed researcher "slept with" several members of New York city's
high-stepping dance troupe, the Rockettes, while his wife and children
slept soundly in rooms on the other side of their apartment? Why,
William Dement, of course! I looked through his newly published book,
_The promise of sleep_ (with Christopher Vaughan, 1999, New York:
Delacorte Press), and found much of interest concerning his early work
on sleeping and dreaming. And, no, he did not recant his position on REM
and dreams. But first, some things you might not have known about this
research.
Dement was interested in becoming a Freudian psychoanalyst when he began
medical school at the University of Chicago in 1951. After hearing a
lecture by Nathaniel Kleitman, Dement asked the sleep researcher if he
could work in his lab. At that time, Eugene Aserinsky, the graduate
student who first discovered the rapid-eye-movements of what we now call
REM sleep, told Dement that "Dr. Kleitman and I think that these eye
movements might be related to dreaming" (p. 35). Because Dement was
interested in becoming a psychoanalyst, Aserinsky's comment was "more
stunning than if he had just offered me a winning lottery ticket,"
perhaps an anachronism (were there lotteries at the time?), but a
telling simile: Dement thought that REM sleep might lead him to the
"heart of Freudian psychology" (p. 35). Although Dement now thinks of
Freudian psychoanalysis as unscientific, he then thought of its
principles as "extremely compelling" (p. 36). So, it seems that, even
before he had collected any data, Dement was prepared to equate REM
sleep with dreaming.
By the late 1950s, Dement was convinced that dreaming occurred only
during REM. His REM-deprivation studies (which he originally called
studies of "dream deprivation") were attempts to test Freud's idea that
dreaming was necessary for maintaining mental equilibrium. His study of
Peter Tripp, the NY disk jockey who stayed up eight days and nights in a
row (200 hours) as a publicity stunt was a very important one in
Dement's thinking: Tripp, who became mildly psychotic as his sleep
deprivation continued, seemed to confirm Dement's decidely Freudian
ideas about the purpose of dreaming. (This event was ably recreated on
the old Dick Van Dyke show, as any of you who spent the 1960s watching
TV and growing up already know.) However, it turned out that Tripp was
taking Ritalin to help him stay awake. Thus, he probably developed a
drug-induced psychosis. Dement continued with more systematic research
on "dream [i.e., REM] deprivation"--research which made him "a celebrity
in psychiatric circles," especially because of his finding that REM
pressure increased as REM deprivation continued over successive nights.
Dement reported that, "I began to talk about dreaming as a kind of
nighttime psychosis.... From our early experiments with dream
deprivation, it seemed a short step to showing that if we stopped
dreaming long enough, the dream pressure would erupt as psychosis in
waking life" (p. 44). Of course, as you all know, this prediction was
not supported, and Dement had to recant his position.
Now, on to his present thinking about REM. Dement summarized
inaccurately the thinking of Hobson and McCarley by stating that, "Two
prominent neuroscientist sleep researchers ignited controversy by
marshaling evidence to support their hypothesis that dreams are nothing
more than random nerve activity in the brain with no real purpose or
meaning" (p. 292). In actuality, Hobson has often stated his belief that
activity in the frontal lobes creates meaning out of the random
electrical activity generated by structures in the brain stem.
Nevertheless, Dement's mistake is understandable because Hobson's idea
of "meaning" and Dement's idea of "meaning" are very different. Dement
believes that dreams have a very fundamental meaning for us. To
illustrate this, he related a dream he had about 35 years ago that
caused him to give up smoking immediately and to never go back to it: he
dreamed that he had developed terminal lung cancer. He also provided
several other anecdotes told to him over the years. He concluded that,
"Dreaming is like another world, an alternate reality with its own rules
and lessons" (p. 292). If we can discover the function of dreaming, he
believes, we will discover something very fundamental about ourselves.
He acknowledges that some studies show evidence for NREM dreaming, "but
I believe this depends on how you define 'dreaming' and how you ask
people about dreams" (p. 293); and he repeats the claim that vivid
imagery occurs in only about 10% of NREM dreams, but in about 80% of REM
dreams. It seems that his beliefs about the near-exclusiveness of REM
dreaming were strongly influenced by his own personal experience in the
early days of his research: "In my early days with Nathaniel Kleitman, I
often served as a research subject, partly because there was no money to
induce lots of others to volunteer but mainly because it was an amazing
experience to be repeatedly awakened and vividly remember a lengthy
dream every time. Furthermore, in at least 100 awakenings from non-REM
sleep, I NEVER RECALLED DREAMING" (P. 293; emphasis added). I would
imagine that this personal experience occurring very early in his
research may have solidified his views on NREM dreaming at this time.
One experience in particular seemed important for this process. In 1954,
Dement quickly trained another medical student to identify REM tracings
on a polygraph and served as the subject to show the student the
connection between REM and dreaming. Dement was awakened five times
during the night but could remember no dreams. On the fifth awakening,
"I was so embarassed and upset, I lied. I haltingly produced a phony
dream fragment" (p. 293). He was "overjoyed and incredibly relieved"
when he discovered that the student, by mistake, had awakened him only
during NREM. This seemingly confirmed for Dement the REM/dreaming
connection:: "If anyone wants to claim that subject or experimenter bias
plays a role in the REM sleep-dreaming relationship, I could not have
been more biased toward recalling a dream, and I was utterly unable to
dredge up even a wisp of one." (p. 294)
Although the evidence collected from others now has caused Dement to
change his mind to some degree (i.e., he admits that there is some NREM
dreaming), he believes that most dreams (and perhaps the most vivid and
"important" ones) occur during REM. That is, he believes that REM and
dreaming, although not isomorphic, are nearly so. In this way, Dement
discounts the research summarized by Stephen Black for this list. This
example may be a good one to share with students when we talk about the
dangers of anecdotal evidence as well as the biasing effects of personal
experience on our knowledge about the world.
But this is enough. If you want to know more about Dement's work and
ideas, you can read the book. I cannot resist, however, sharing a few
other interesting tidbits of information from the book:
(1) Aserinsky seemed happy to hand the work on REM over to Dement.
Aserinsky was uncertain as to the importance of his discovery of REM,
and Dement believes that staying up all night observing sleeping people
was putting a strain on Aserinsky's marriage.
(2) Dement was not allowed, at first, to study the sleep of women
because of the possible scandal that might ensue when it became known
that a male researcher was observing a sleeping woman. Eventually
Kleitman gave his permission for Dement to observe his (Dement's)
girlfriend, but he required that Aserinsky be present to act as a
chaperone. On the fateful night, Aserinsky immediately laid down and
fell to sleep. Afterwards, whenever Dement used women as participants, a
taint of immorality still clung to the work for some. Dement apparently
didn't help matters when, eventually, he married a participant in his
sleep research.
(3) The eyebrows continued to raise as several members of the Rockettes
became research subjects in the lab he built in the NY city apartment
Dement shared with his wife and children. A Barnard student, who also
was a member of the Rockettes, took part in Dement's studies. She told
several of her friends in the dance troupe and they also volunteered:
"Thus, the following became a common scene: In the evening a lovely
woman, still in theatrical makeup, would come to my apartment building
and ask the doorman for my room. The next morning she would reappear in
the same clothes, sometimes accompanied by an exhausted and unshaven
Howie Roffwarg--a psychiatric resident...--who had spent the night
monitoring the machines" (p. 40). Eventually, one of the doormen asked
Dement about these comings and goings: "I suppose I could have satisfied
his curiosity--but I couldn't resist the impulse just to smile broadly
and say nothing" (p. 40).
(4) Aserinsky was killed in an automobile accident just last year when
his car hit a tree.
Sorry about the length, but I couldn't resist summarizing some of this
for you.
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (602) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (602) 423-6298
Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85252
"For every problem, there is a solution that is neat, simple, and
wrong." H. L. Mencken
