Dream-Sharing and Human Self-Domestication

There are many theories of the function of dreams, such as memory consolidation, emotion processing, threat simulation and social simulation. In general, such theories hold that the function of dreams occurs within sleep; occurs for unrecalled dreams as well as for dream that are recalled on awakening; and that conscious recall of dreams is not necessary for their function to occur. In contrast, we propose that dreams have an effect of enhancing empathy and group bonding when dreams are shared and discussed with others. We propose also that this effect would have occurred in history and pre-history and, as it would have enhanced the cohesiveness and mutual understanding of group members, the fictional and engaging characteristics of dream content would have been selected for during human social evolution, interacting with cultural practices of dream-sharing. Such dream-sharing may have taken advantage of the long REM periods that occur for biological reasons near the end of the night. Dream-production and dream-sharing may have developed alongside story-telling, utilising common neural mechanisms. Dream-sharing hence would have contributed to Human Self-Domestication, held by many researchers to be the primary driver of the evolution of human prosociality, tolerance and reduced intragroup emotional reactivity. We note that within-sleep theories of dream function rely on correlational rather than experimental findings, and have as yet untested and speculative mechanisms, whereas post-sleep effects of dream-sharing are easily testable and have mechanisms congruent with the social processes proposed by the theory of Human Self-Domestication.

The role of attention and intention in dreams

Traditionally, dreams have been seen as experiences that one cannot control, as something that happensto the dreamer (at times through involvement of supernatural powers), without the dreamer’s permission,volition or agency. This view was famously challenged in the advent of psychoanalysis: in his Interpretation ofDreams, Freud proposed that while we may not be consciously in control of our dreams, our unconscious mindis actively constructing dream content, and that dream content is symptomatic of our repressed, accumulatedneuroses (Freud, 1900/2010). This shift in perspective signaled that dreams may in fact be subject to individualexperience and to one’s mental state (which is something that is possible to change, or even to control),therefore bringing, at least partially, responsibility for dreams to the dreamers themselves. Emergingneuroscience of dreams, in 1970s, however, adopted a more conservative behaviorist position, and for arelatively long time the dominant view has been one of neuro-reductionism, where dreams were seen as randomhallucinatory products of the activity of the sleeping brain (Hobson & McCarley, 1977). In recent years, a more2nuanced picture of dreams is gradually emerging. Research from psychology, philosophy and anthropologyconverges on the idea that dreams may be individual or even collective practices rather than uncontrolled brainevents. Developmentally and temporally, dreaming can be recognized as cognitive achievement (alongside othercognitive abilities, such as memory, perception, attention, etc.) (Foulkes, 2014). And dream qualities, includingwhat is possible in the dream state, how rich the dream experience is, and how well the dream will beremembered, may change as a result of attentional practices during waking hours. Research on dreamincubation, dream sharing and lucid dreams shows that the dreamer is an active participant and co-creator oftheir dream life, and that the dreamer’s agency, awareness and degrees of control are all dynamic, continuousand potentially trainable skills. Further, in line with work on 4E cognition (Menary, 2010) and followingevidence from sensory incorporation studies (Nielsen, 1993, 2017; Sauvageau, Nielsen, & Montplaisir, 1998), ithas been proposed that dreams are not simply experiences of virtual reality confined in the sleeping brain, butrather can be conceptualized as processes of embodied imagination (Thompson, 2014; Solomonova & Sha,2016; Solomonova, 2017), rooted in lived sensorimotor experience and responsive to sensory information fromthe outside world.In this chapter, we review the different ways that attention works in relation to dreams and how it mayfunction in dreams, and apply the framework of attention, proposed in this volume – as a means of accessingand mediating interactions with the world - to the dreaming world. We first review prior work on the role ofattention as 1) access to dreams, e.g., how practices of recording and sharing dreams act as enabling factors forimproving dream recall and enhancing richness of dream experience; and as 2) a mediator of dreams, e.g., howincubation, imagery rehearsal, and ultimately lucidity can be cultivated as cognitive skills enabling agency in thedream experience. We propose that attention functions as a constitutive factor in dream experience and that it isa trainable, developmental cognitive skill. We argue that dreams are not simply experiences that happen to thedreamer, rather, through employing attentional techniques in various ways, the dreamer may cultivate differentdegrees of agency in the dream.

‘That’s what the dream says’: The use of normalizing devices in dream reports

The paper examines the discursive construction of dream reports. Based on a discursive constructionist approach, the study reviews problematic aspects of constructing dream narratives. Particularly, dream-tellers need to display the external character of their reports and to demonstrate that – although in their dreams they saw and did strange things – they are normal and reliable agents. Subsequently, particular ways in which people report on unrealistic content of their dreams are explored. For this purpose, the use of normalizing devices in dream reports published on dream-sharing websites is analyzed. The study demonstrates that several normalizing devices, including contrast structures and two-part structures – such as ‘At first I thought X. . . but then I realized Y’ and ‘I was just doing X… when Y’ – are employed in dream reports. The study also suggests that the proper use of these devices might possibly contribute to the trustworthiness of dream reports in everyday interaction.