Lowy, Samuel

The Czech psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Lowy published a book on dreams in London in 1942. The book was Psychological and Biological Foundations of Dream Interpretation.

 He felt that all physical changes produce stimuli cuasing dreams. So things such as poor digestion or difficult symptoms of sligth illness can be the cause of dreams. Of course he included such changes as anxiety, anger or sexual impulses as such causes

“Lowy offers the provocative proposal that it is biologically necessary that we experience dream images during sleep, but that it is not very important whether we remember them. We obtain the benefits from dreaming, even if we don’t remember the images, because of its contribution to affect regulation. He suggests that if a difficult situation in waking life is not confronted, the subconscious psyche will present this reality to us in our dreams so that we can form “antibodies.” As a consequence, when the difficulty actually occurs, the psyche, the nervous system, and the personality are better prepared to cope with it.” Quoted from Dreams and Dreaming by Norman McKenzie

Lowy’s difficult and somewhat neglected book anticipates the direction in which dream research has recently moved. See  Life’s Little Secrets; Functions of dreams; Carl Jung