Empirical research and literature review of the experimental and systematic study of dreams in the late 19th and early 20th century: the important role of general psychology

The aim of this work is to bring out the historiographical categorization and periodization of the studies on dreams between the late 19th and early 20th century. The study is divided into different stages: bibliographic research, content analysis, and statistical analysis. For bibliographic research, we selected 315 studies written between 1872 and 1940 and published in PsycInfo, the database of the American Psychological Association. We assigned each work to specific categories (psychological and physical disorders, general psychology, psychoanalytical theory, physiological psychology, and other categories). Each of these works underwent content analysis, whereby we highlighted the main model used by the different authors in the dreaming studies. Statistical analysis examined the relation between model and category. The methodology used integrated quantitative and qualitative perspectives for a better interpretation of the data. This historical research gives a new contribution to contemporary studies that have neglected the study of dreams in past decades. In fact, the conclusion of this study highlights the attention of general psychology to the study of dreams, the important role of psychological models as the main research approach in this field, and the premature attention to the dream with the physiological and psychological model, in an integrated perspective.