User:Kelwala/sandbox

Criticism of Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis from a psychoanalytic perspective. The effect of Hobson and McCarley's two part article in Journal of American Psychiatric Association in 1976 on the practice of psychiatry was predominantly negative if not outright harmful. Though the concept of synthesis in their two prong theory was straight taken from Freud' concept of "Secondary Revision", instead of acknowledge their debt the entire thrust of their article was that Freud was wrong, dreams are not wish-fulfillment but chaotic activation of the cortex by pontine cells and hence not a product of psychic activity. Per Hobson and McCarley dreams were no longer activated by the energy that was still present in the ego from day's residues and childhood memories that would not give up their cathexis during sleep but by periodic activation of neuronal clusters in the very base of the brain. Without giving any sensible reason as to why the neurons in the pons would get periodically activated which would result in random stimulation of the cortex, and as to why such chaotic stimulation of the brain would produce dreams that can sometimes be so beautifully coherent and sensible, the authors could not condemn the classical view that dreams are fulfillment of wishes. Something that no language, song or artistic production ever views in any other way. The overall effect of Activation-Synthesis hypothesis has been a mass abandonment by the psychiatric profession towards taking interest in analyzing dreams in psychotherapy. Dream analysis to begin with a very arduous and demanding task, requiring immense concentration, interest and knowledge of symbolism and the technique of psychoanalysis, was quickly dropped by the profession which was already in throes of giving up all that was psychological in psychiatry in favor of quickly giving diagnostic labels to patients and putting them on psychotropic medications. The fact that Activation-Synthesis hypothesis hardly explained why dreams are so filled with emotions, why their character follows the theme from the day before, as to why if we have a disturbed day we can hardly sleep let alone dream at night, and if we dream it takes on the character of the days emotions if not turns into nightmare, as to why we get penile erection during dream if it is not due to sexual wishes, as to why dreams are coherent one minute and completely obscure at the next, the psychiatric profession gladly abandoned the classical psychoanalytic theory of dreams. Such a rapid embrace of the Activation-Synthesis hypothesis by the psychiatric profession is a monument to the human tendency to always take easy way out in matters of science and life.