Main description:

- The first book that reports a systematic study of the infantile dreams of a healthy subject, hence not from the perspective of psychotherapy. - Underlines the usefulness of studying dreams by an ontogenetic approach, aimed at understanding dreams in general through the study of children's dreams.

Contents:

Introduction Part 1: Methodological aspects of the study 1. The credibility of children's dream reports 2. The methodology of this study Part 2: The debut of dreaming activity: infantile dreams (ages four to five) 3. The predominance of clear wish-fulfilment dreams 4. Nature of the wishes appearing in dream reports 5. Daytime sources and triggering conditions of clear wish-fulfilment dreams 6. How do dreams act? The modus operandi of clear wish-fulfilment dreams 7. Less common forms of dreaming in infancy Part 3: The decline of infantile forms of dreaming (ages six to seven) 8. Changes in dream repertoire and developments in wish-fulfilment dreaming 9. Development of dream bizarreness and dream-work operations 10. Bad dreams 11. Ego and super-ego development and changes in dreaming Part 4: Dreaming in middle childhood (ages eight to ten) 12. Changes in dream repertoire and developments in wish-fulfilment dreams at ages 8-10 13. Dream distortion and new dream-works operations 14. Changes in bad dreams Part 5: The meaning and function of infantile dreams 15. The function of dreams: the affective-reestablishment (AR) hypothesis 16. Infantile forms of dreaming in adults 17. A new ontogenetic psychological-psychoanalytic model of dream Conclusions