Dream to Create

Abstract

In rapid eye movement (REM) dreams elements are taken out of their waking-life context and associated to portray a complex, non-obvious pattern in experience. In the last chapter we looked at this process as insight into a hidden pattern; here, we focus on the novel nature of the pattern. A series of dream scenes creates a narrative that has not been experienced. REM dream narratives are new, counterfactual, or fictional, but this fiction emerges from associations between elements of previous experiences (or prior knowledge). In this chapter I argue that wake and dream states are not totally differentiated. In particular, creative people may be in a dream-like state during wake; this would enable them to combine the creativity of the dream state with the secondary consciousness of the wake state. In this hybrid, de-differentiated state, creative individuals could imagine innovative, socially valuable, rather than purely personally meaningful, creative products.