Epilogue

We no longer dream to survive. Our lives are no longer contingent on making non-obvious associations to identify a pattern in the behaviour of predators, competitors, and potential mates as they move around to secure resources in the world. Has this changed our dreams? Has it had an impact on our minds/brains?...

Dream to Go Crazy?

The previous chapter argues that creative people are in a hybrid, disordered state in-between dreaming and wake. In this chapter I propose that if this in-between, de-differentiated state becomes more severe and enduring, psychiatric disorders will result. De-differentiation of wake and dreaming has two sides: dreaming suffuses wake and wake permeates dreaming. The idea that madness results from dreaming invading wake is of long standing. So is the notion that highly creative people are somewhat crazy. But the conception of a wake-like state pervading dreaming hasn’t been explored. Chaos theory delineates the dynamics of de-differentiation, disorder, and madness. Madness is defined as mistaking a complex non-obvious pattern in your experience for your experience.

Dream to Remember

This chapter explores how the process of creating a complex, visuospatial, associative image of a pattern in experience is mnemonic, i.e. it aids remembering. Clearly, unless we retained a dream memory image it couldn’t improve our chances of survival in wake. I compare associative dream images to the associative images people use in wake to help them remember. These associative images all derive from the Ancient Art of Memory, incorporating the Method of Loci. I argue the Method of Loci works as a memory technique because it mimics the daily tour in the home range. Equally, the associative images from the Ancient Art of Memory echo the dream images retained at landmark junctions in memory networks.

Dream to Survive

In this chapter we look at why we make non-obvious associations in dreams. Perhaps surprisingly, I argue the ability to recognize complex patterns in past experience, and portray them in dream images, was much more important for early humans than it is now—back then we dreamed to survive. I argue we retained dream images at an unconscious level so we could use them in dangerous situations, which required fast responses. As early humans, we risked extreme dangers whenever we visited dependable food or water sites that were also frequented by predators and competitors. We could reduce risk through identifying any associative patterns of their visiting behaviour. The evolutionary answer to the perplexing question ‘Why depict non-obvious associations in dreams’ was ‘To ensure survival’.

Dream to Associate

Dreams make non-obvious associations to depict complex patterns in past experience. These patterns are constructed from elements of different memories. This chapter illustrates this concept through a dream, ‘the white paper kite and the butterfly’. Dreams portray a complex, experiential pattern, but this pattern hasn’t been experienced, so dreams don’t depict what really happened. Memories can be semantic (for knowledge) or episodic (for experiences). They are held in brain networks composed of pathways and junctions. Episodic memories are represented along pathways. I argue rapid eye movement (REM) dream images, composed of elements of different experiences, are represented at junctions.

Dream to Predict

This chapter emphasizes the predictive role of dreams in the sense of depicting a non-obvious pattern in past events in an image that is retained at an unconscious level. When assimilated with sensory data, this unconscious image then drives expectations during wake about what’s going on in the world and what will happen next. Across evolutionary time this was particularly useful when there was any ambiguity in sensory data during potentially dangerous situations. But although dreams predict, they don’t usually come true. Their primary evolutionary role was to avoid dangers. Acting on informed expectations precludes possible futures, like being eaten at the waterhole.

Dream to Decide (and to Act)

Freud famously thought dreams to be the ‘royal road’ to the unconscious. Do retained dream associations, which depict a probabilistic pattern inherent in experience, drive unconscious decision making and consequent action? This chapter focuses on this question. I argue that, across evolutionary time, retained dream images prompted unconscious decision making and action, archetypically, to approach or avoid the waterhole. Unconscious decisions may still drive our decisions and actions but, perhaps surprisingly, only when the decision is complex, with several things to be taken into account. When the decision is simple, with few variables, conscious decisions are best.

Dream to Reveal

My argument is that dreaming depicts complex patterns but not ones we have actually experienced because a dream is composed of elements from different experiences. Consequently, dreams reveal hidden patterns in our experience. These complex patterns are associative. Associations create meaning. So dreams will reveal personal meanings we have forged through experience but weren’t aware of during wake. Dream associations are non-obvious. We need insight to detect complex, non-obvious patterns. Since Freud we think of this insight as dream interpretation we undertake during wake. But there is also experimental evidence that we have better insight into complex patterns during sleep, as compared with wake.

Dreams as Patterns, Fit with Freud and Other Dream Theorists

This final chapter summarizes my ‘dreams as patterns’ theory and compares it with those of Freud, who thought dreams express wishes—albeit ones that are disguised through associations; Revonsuo, who believes dreams simulate threats; and Hartmann, who thinks dreams make creative, emotional associations between experiences, all of which bear a relationship to my own ideas. I use one of my own dreams, ‘the museum’, to illuminate my core concepts and some of Freud’s. I also briefly discuss the positions of those, Hobson and McCarley, Crick and Mitchison, and Flanagan, who think (or thought) dreams are just noise, nonsense, or epiphenomena, i.e. that dreams are without meaning or purpose—clearly, the antithesis of my ‘dreams as patterns’ theory.

Dream to See Patterns

What is a dream? I think a dream identifies a complex pattern in experience and portrays this in a dream image. In other words, I argue for a complex pattern identification theory of dreaming. We can detect complex patterns in wake too, but our thought is convergent, sequential, and driven by more obvious associations, whereas, during dreaming, we see less obvious associations because we think in a divergent way. This chapter covers why, in our evolutionary past, we needed to detect complex, non-obvious, divergent patterns, and begins to explain why the dreaming state evolved to do this. I think complex pattern identification occurs during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, with the pattern visualized in a REM dream.