Oxymoron

I had a fantastic dream a few nights ago. The details are mine to know and yours to guess, but there was one feature of it that baffles me: my dream world was very nearly consistent.

The gist is this: I'm walking a very long route through a town that ended up where I started with a common section near the end (in my dream it was a particularly odd and distinctive bridge that wouldn't exist in the real world although it probably could).

Now dreams usually ramble (a bit like my postings ), so the fact that a feature repeats itself in a geographicallyand temporally consistent way is puzzling.

As I understand it, Freud's dream theory has been discredited, is this true? These days, there seem to be attempts to show that dreams have some higher cognitive function, such as memory management. Personally I find that a bit odd, too teleological (would any dream do for some memories, or do specific sorts of things have to happen). My own - utterly naive and unresearched! - theory is that dreams are a by-product of what happens when the body motor functions are decoupled from the brain (which is why we don't move during dreams). The brain goes in to a kind of free-fall with little or no input and output, and you get a sort of "random walk" through events that are stitched together into some vaguely coherent whole. I think that the decoupling is not for the brain so much as the body, though. Perhaps repair of injury or disease is easier when the controller is turned off and the bits remains relatively still?

Well, if that's so, it seems unfeasibly unlikely that a random walk in a space with many many dimensions would create a world with consistent features that I could walk in. Does anyone out here have any thoughts/opinions on this subject?

(Oh, just in case you were wondering: yes, there was a very foxy lady in my dream;no, she was fully clothed )

Silent Acorns

The last I heard about "dream theory" is that they are basically your consious mind trying to make sense of the ramblings of your sub-consious in the absense of any external stimulii (especially sight). This makes sense to me, and I certainly think it's a lot more plausible than "the cup represents your sub-consious desire to have sex with your mother ...". This much I do know: anyone who says they know what your dreams "mean" is a liar.

As for the decoupling of the brain and body, I don't think it has as much to do with the "repair of injury or disease" as it does with preventing you from wandering around and falling off a cliff (or whatever).

I can't say anything about the consistency of your dream though. Perhaps after a million zany dreams you finally had one that wasn't? Maybe your focus was strong enough that at some level you "willed" the dream to be consistent?

Then again, maybe it was a message from the Virgin Mary (foxy lady with clothes) that you should come back to the Lord (the bridge)?

Stiletto One

Heh.

I've actually had dreams where I was conscious enough to know that I was dreaming, and could analyze it as I went, but I didn't have enough control to go and wake myself up or anything.

Those are the coolest dreams, though, because you can just go and do the most WHACK things, and you know that you can get away with them.

DamagedGoods

I never seem to have that kind - usually I end up doing whacked things, and then later on figure out that it's a dream (while I'm still dreaming) and have a great sense of relief.

Oxymoron

D'ya know, you might just be on to something there...

(There are phone lines charging £1.50/minute in the UK for that sort of crap.)

Hang on though, she was of oriental ethnicity, and looked not at all like the statues. What the hey, she was so cute it might make me want to be catholic

schu

Do a google search on lucid dreaming. You will find that many people can control the contents of of their dreams. It seems to me that once you know you are in a dream you have some control over the content.

happyboy

i consistantly have dreams that me and a friend of mine have the power to jump up on the roofs of buildings in my home town, but only at night, and only after two or three tries. the entire dream consists of me and this friend running around town jumping up on roofs. what would be the fruedian interpretation of that dream?

happyboy, curious to know

braces_for_impact

i consistantly have dreams that me and a friend of mine have the power to jump up on the roofs of buildings in my home town, but only at night, and only after two or three tries. the entire dream consists of me and this friend running around town jumping up on roofs. what would be the fruedian interpretation of that dream?


I've had that dream! Accept it's not jumping, but we glide on air currents. No wind, no flying.

Cool dream though.

Better than the one I had of me and some friends riding flying Panda bears down the highway (at an incredible rate of speed), while stabbing them with bloody Katana's.

Interpret that!

Mr. Sammi

Whew, what a packet of wierdos.

* * *

I have heard of special people actually interacting with each other, each in their seperate dreams, like 2 or more people in a chat room.

Is this the evolution of dreams? Dream-Chat rooms.

Sammi Na Boodie (count me as in)

Philosoft

True, but lucid dreams seem to require a specific state of consciousness or a specific time. I think there is a physiological reason REM sleep is able to prevent conscious control of dreams. Chances are, you won't be able to learn to control REM sleep dreams; any time you feel in conscious control of a dream, you are most likely in a separate "lucid" state.