Studies of extreme nonlinear optical effects, in which dissipative factors such as absorption and amplification of light in a medium play a fundamental role, are reviewed. The generation of pulses with extremely short duration down to unipolar ones is analysed by tracking the development of ideas related to the self-induced transparency phenomenon, whose practical application becomes real for extremely short pulses in lasers and laser media. Extreme radiation structuring is achieved in dissipative (laser) solitons characterised by a complex topology of phase and polarisation singularities, which is of interest for coding information.