The mystery of dreaming
Laurence Goldstein
February 14, 2023 DOI: 10.4324/9781003347200-3 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key points | Argues that dreams are often fantastic, coherent narratives that exceed waking imaginative ability and can synthesize a dreamer's beliefs, fears, and memories, sometimes solving problems that seem intractable while awake. Proposes that dreaming involves the sensory apparatus as in mental imagery, that dream reports are stories pieced together from remembered fragments, and that the transition between sleep and wakefulness is especially important. |
Abstract
The dream-reports of even the most unimaginative people are often fantastic, gripping narratives of a kind that such people would simply be unable to create were they attempting to write fiction. Sometimes dreams are not of the fantastic, loose, rambling kind but are highly condensed, coherent syntheses of many of the dreamer’s beliefs, fears, anxieties, and memories. Dreams can supply solutions to problems that the dreamers find intractable when they are awake. Dreams occur in sleep, with the sensory apparatus playing a role similar to that which it plays in episodes of mental imagery. The dream report is a coherent story pieced together from the remembered fragments. This is, of course, the merest sketch, but it is of some interest in that great importance is assigned to what happens in the time between being fully asleep and being fully awake.
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 |