The phenomenology of REM-sleep dreaming: The contributions of personal and perspectival ownership, subjective temporality, and episodic memory.
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice November 8, 2018 DOI: 10.1037/cns0000174 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Temporality Phenomenology philosophy Cognitive psychology Psychoanalysis Cognitive science Epistemology |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key points | Argues that the dreamer's misattribution of dream content as real is explained by assuming perspectival but not personal ownership of self-authored mental content. |
Abstract
Although the dream narrative, of (bio)logical necessity, originates with the dreamer, s/he typically does not know this. For the dreamer, the dream world is the real world. In this article I argue that this nightly misattribution is best explained in terms of the concept of mental ownership (e.g., Albahari, 2006; Klein, 2015a; Lane, 2012). Specifically, the exogenous nature of the dream narrative is the result of an individual assuming perspectival, but not personal, ownership of content s/he authored (i.e., “The content in my head is not mine. Therefore it must be peripherally perceived”). Situating explanation within a theoretical space designed to address questions pertaining to the experienced origins of conscious content has a number of salutatory consequences. For example, it promotes predictive fecundity by bringing to light empirical generalizations whose presence otherwise might have gone unnoticed (e.g., the severely limited role of mental time travel within the dream narrative).
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
Cited by 2
- Episodic thought distinguishes spontaneous cognition in waking from REM and NREM sleep. Consciousness and Cognition 2022
- Dreaming is a conscious experience in its own right: proponents of non-cognitive and non-executive theories of dreaming suffer from a retrospective illusion of their waking extended self. Consciousness and Cognition May 30, 2025
Cites 6
- REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience November 2009
- Loss of the sense of self-ownership for perceptions of objects in a case of right inferior temporal, parieto-occipital and precentral hypometabolism. Psychopathology 2008
- Representation of the Self in REM and NREM Dreams. Dreaming June 1, 2007
- Human cognition during REM sleep and the activity profile within frontal and parietal cortices: a reappraisal of functional neuroimaging data. Progress in Brain Research 2005
- Dreaming and episodic memory: a functional dissociation? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2003
and 1 more in the library