Publication Patterns in Dream Research: Trends in the Medical and Psychological Literatures

The annual rate of journal publications is a pertinent index of a scientific field's prosperity. In the present study, annual publication rates were calculated for the field of dream research using both medical (Index Medicus, MEDLINE) and psychological (PsychINFO) reference databases. A composite profile from the medical database spanning 111 years revealed very similar changes in publishing levels following the release of Freud's (1958/1900) The Interpretation of Dreams and the publication in Science ofAserinsky and Kleitman's (1953) article on dreaming and rapid, jerky eye movements. In both cases, the peak year occurred about 15 years after release of the work, and the peak was followed by a precipitous 3-year drop and then a slow and yet variable decline. In the more recent case, the peak level (reached in 1969) dropped (during 1970-1972) by about half and has continued a slow decline to the present day. As is the case with basic sleep research, this level of activity does not keep pace with either (1) global growth in scientific publishing or (2) growth in related sleep disciplines, particularly, sleep disorders and chronobiology. The psychological database confirms many features of the medical database profile—but is advanced by 1 year, i.e., a publishing peak in 1968, a drop from 1969-1971, and a slow decline until 1980. In this case, however, 1981 marks the beginning of a period of renewed growth that has endured to the present. This divergence between the two publishing profiles may reflect the field's shift from psychophysiological to cognitive and dream analytic approaches since the early 1980s.