After his 1923 meeting with Colonel Eugène Caslant, who introduced him to an experimental mental imaging technique, he developed his method of the "directed waking dream" (rêve eveillé dirigé, or RED), explicating it in seven books.
Lying on his back, the subject puts himself into a state of relaxation and closes his eyes in order to create an imaginary scenario in which he is the principal (or sole) hero.
At the theoretical level, Desoille was influenced by first by Sigmund Freud, then by Carl Gustav Jung and finally, following his membership of the French Communist Party, he constrained himself to a Pavlovian theorization.
He studied the relationship between symbolism, invention, and memory in his early works, underscoring the applicability of the directed waking dream method in exploring sublimation.
Finally in the 1950s and 1960s, concomitant to his political affiliations, Desoille held to a Pavlovian conception of neurosis, based on reflexes, in what was termed a "rational psychotherapy".