Are Dreams Narrative Experiences? How Assumptions About Fictional Narratives Shape Debates on Dream Experiences
Gaia Mizzon, Jennifer Windt
Topoi December 3, 2025 DOI: 10.1007/s11245-025-10326-w (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Storytelling Dream reports Narrative structure Fiction Dream formation |
| Key points | Argues that philosophical accounts of dreams rely on an unacknowledged metonymic assimilation of fictional narratives with dream reports and then with dreams themselves, leading to a pervasive assumption that dreams exhibit a narrative structure. |
Abstract
The concept of narrative is widespread in the philosophical literature on dreams. Although several works have examined the putative narrative character of dreams by drawing on narratology, literary theory, and semiotics, there has been virtually no investigation of how preconceptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the philosophical debate on dreams and dreaming. This paper aims to address this gap. We argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves. As a result, features and devices typically associated with literary fiction are frequently used as a speculative explanatory framework to understand dreams and the processes underlying their formation, encoding, and retrieval. To illuminate this tendency, we focus on two central categories in the philosophy of dreaming: authorship and composition. By examining relevant cases in which these categories are employed to support divergent ontological and epistemological claims, we argue that similar accounts rest on a shared—yet frequently unacknowledged—assumption: that dreams exhibit a narrative structure and that dreaming is, at its core, a process of narrative construction. Through our conceptual analysis, we aim to lay the groundwork for further exploration of the emergence of narrative thinking in spontaneous thought, encompassing both wakefulness and sleep.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cites 29
- Dynamic reconfiguration of the default mode network during narrative comprehension Nature Communications July 18, 2016
- Lucid Dreaming: a State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming Sleep September 1, 2009
- Dreaming as mind wandering: evidence from functional neuroimaging and first-person content reports. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013
- The threat simulation theory in light of recent empirical evidence: A review The American Journal of Psychology April 1, 2009
- Why are dreams interesting for philosophers? The example of minimal phenomenal selfhood, plus an agenda for future research1 Frontiers in Psychology 2013
and 24 more in the library