Page 31 - Like No Business I Know

Somnilac

advantage of our charter and review some of that information. And
in this case, I’m hoping you’ll agree, it was a good thing she did.”
Pfizer sat still, emanating disagreeability.
“As you are undoubtedly aware,” Ball continued, “theories of
dreaming have changed in tandem with other advances in scientific
understanding. From earlier metaphysical models identifying dreams
with otherworldly travels and portents, our ideas about what goes on
in our heads during sleep progressed through the infancy of
psychology into the Freudian interpretation of dreams in the
beginning of the twentieth century. That view properly located the
phenomenon within a purely biological context, explaining it as a
necessary activity of the unconscious mind and making the content
of dreams explicable in terms of personal or archetypal symbols
related to unresolved psychosexual tensions. This unfortunately left
dream theory with one foot, as it were, remaining in the camp of
fortune-telling and mythopoesis. The discovery and analysis of
R.E.M., or rapid eye movement, revealing the presence of dreaming
in a sleeping individual, was the only real advance in dream science
until the nineteen-nineties.”
“Then, spurred by work in brain research and information theory,
it was posited that what actually went on during dreaming was the
reprocessing of the day’s short-term memory into long-term memory.
The images and narratives perceived during dreaming were nothing
more than artifacts of this physiological activity, influenced perhaps
by transient emotions. The necessity of dreaming, then, became
obvious, and the results of R.E.M.-sleep deprivation were finally
understandable: people prevented from dreaming exhibited a range
of negative effects, from irritability to lower intelligence test scores.
This new theory also explained why all mammals above a certain level
of brain development dream; Freud could never explain that.”
Pfizer fidgeted with a large signet ring on his right pinky.
“I don’t see what this has to do with Somnilac’s approval, Mr.
Ball.”
“I’m coming to it, sir. Our researcher wanted to verify the new
theory of dreaming by following up on the research subjects in
Schmerck’s Somnilac trials. Her hypothesis was that if your pill really
helped people sleep better, then they should be dreaming more; if
they are dreaming more, then they ought to be processing

30