Theoretical issues.Inspired by Sigmund Freud and David Foulkes

• A functional theory of dreams and dreaming, implies a model of the mind.

• In assessing dream content, is the reprentational mode and not the thematic content, that is of theoretical interest.

• If you can’t account for dreams, you are not even close to getting it right.

Established wisdom concerning dreams

• Dreams are primarily visual, but any sense modality can be experienced in dreams

• There has not been established any convincing connection between dream content and any psychological variable

• Dreams are usually commonplace in narrative and setting, even if bizarre dreams do exist

• Dreams are believable world analogs (Foulkes)• The single-mindedness of dreams

(Rechsthaffen)

Hartmann’s data

• After proper examination of 456 dream reports from various sources, no instance of reading, writing or typing was found, and only one (questionable) instance of calculating.

• In a questionnaire to frequent dream recallers, around 90% answered that they “never” or “hardly ever” dreamt of reading, writing, calculating and typing.

• Through the same questionnaire it was ascertained that the respondents used a substantial part of their waking time to read, write or type.

Methodological notes concerning Hartmann’s data

• A remarkable agreement between the two judges in the content analysis of the 456 dream reports.

• The sample was of persons highly interested in dreams and probably also knowable of dream research and with strong convictions concerning dreams and their own dreamlife.

• It was 60% return of the questionnaire, which probably underlines that the sample consists of persons knowable and highly interested in dreams.

• The frequency of the items in their dream life was assessed by the respondents on a five point scale.

Responses to the question:”I have had dreams where I was watching TV”

”I have had dreams where I was reading””I have had dreams where public persons participated”

Adapted from Hem 1994, Hem 2002

0102030405060708090

100

see tv reading public

yes

no

Method

• A questionaire with some 60 items

• Each question is a yes/no-question, or a modified version with four alternatives

• The questionaire was distributed in the beginning of a lecture, it was answered in the pause and it was delivered at the end.

The sample

• The sample was an opportunity sample of first year students in mathematics and psychology (mean age 20years)

• The questionaire was answered by 242 persons (161 in mathematics and 81 in psychology)

• The return rate was assessed at over 90%• The gender rate of the sample is 41% female

and 59 % men.• Among the mathematic students 74% is men,

among psychology students 20% is men.

The Århus-data as a support of Hartmann’s observations

• Only 10% says “yes” to the statement “I have had dreams where I was reading”

• The support is strengthened by the different sample and sampling method

• The support is also strengthened by the fact that the results are the same, even if the style of quistionnairing is different

The Århus data as a supplement to Hartmann’s data

• That only 5% can say yes to the statement “I have had dreams where I was watching TV” put that activity in the same bracket as the three r’s as far as dreaming is concerned

• It underlines the lack of connection between the waking activity and the dream content that Harmann observe for the three r’s

• However watching TV is a very different activity from the three r’s, it is not an activity “involving rapid, serial, focused, feed-forward processing”, which Hartmann suggests is the reason why the three r’s are relatively lacking in dreams

The lack of politics and societal events in dreams

• Hall’s observations concerning the lack of the mentioning of the Hiroshima bomb in his first collected dream samples

• That we seldom do dream of politics or societal events is part of the assumed common knowledge

• The Århus data support this notion

Responses to the question:

Have you ever had dreams about political or societal issues?Have you ever dreamt that you participated in war?

Have you ever had expllcit sexual dreams?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

politics sexuality

often

sometime

seldom

never

war

Adapted from Hem 1994, Hem 2002

i

Dreams of reading and politics: Two cases

• The dream of Volume IV of Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital”

• The dream of a homoerotic scene with President Giscard d’Estain

Two theoretical notions

• Hobson: The waking ego does the best of a bad job in making a coherent cognitive experience out of a randomly activated limbic system and cortex. The three r’s might not have a limbic representation /function

• Hartmann: The three r’s is, in PDP-language, feed forward processes, while dreams are expression of an auto-associative net, guided by the dominant emotional concern of the dreamer.

Dreams as an expression of a noncultivated mind

• The waking mind is in many respects a soft-ware product, created through a societal process. The human mind is a cultural product.

• The sleeping mind might not have taken part in the general cultivation of the processes of the mind

• The mentality that is exhibited in dreams, and the mental capacities exhibited, might therefore be the same as before we started civilizing ourselves