[Nightmares--dreams and thought processes]

After reviewing the literature concerned with the function of dreaming and especially dreaming in the child, the author presents various theories about the role of dream, with special emphasis on S. R. Palombo's theory on the relationships between dream and memory. The proposed hypothesis, which is based on various elements (as study of nightmares in children, oniric life of pregnant or post-partum women, occurrence of nightmares in autistic children and counter-transferential drowsiness in the analyst) takes nightmares as a more or less complete failure of the primarization processes of primary significants. The issue of dreams and nightmares is being related here with the now classical distinction of psychic processes in originary, primary and secondary ones. To be sure, this is but a mere metapsychological hypothesis which needs to be developed by further clinical studies.