I would like to raise the question of whether attempts, like the target article's, to spell out the function of dreams tend to be premature just-so stories that show insufficient deference to the null hypothesis at the beginning and a neglect of falsifiability at the end. In this case, in particular, an analogy – ancient mnemonic techniques – is shown to bear similarities to consolidation processes presumed to be implemented by rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming. My question is whether the mnemonic analogy can serve as a scientific model that both informs and delimits the REM-function hypothesis of dreaming. Actually, dreams are like many things, including aphasia, subliminal perception, hysterical symptoms, schizophrenia, jokes, daydreams, poetry, Bartlettian and Freudian reconstruction, and, yes, also mnemonic techniques.
Llewellyn does not try sufficiently to test out her proposals against modern research findings in dream psychology (an admittedly sparse corpus, in view of the massive neglect of the subject of dreams by cognitive psychology for decades). Still, some specific research-based questions come to mind. How does the mnemonic analogy bear on the important modern finding – glancingly alluded to in her article (sect. 4.2.4, para. 5) of a U-shaped function describing the incorporation of awake experiences in dreams over, roughly, a one-week window (with maximal dream incorporation occurring a day or two after awake experiences – the day-residue effect – and about a week after the awake experiences) (e.g., Blagrove et al. Reference Blagrove, Fouquet, Henley-Einion, Pace-Schott, Davies, Neuschaffer and Turnbull2011a; Nielsen & Powell Reference Nielsen and Powell1988a; Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Kuiken, Alain, Stenstrom and Powell2004). Or, how would the mnemonic hypothesis handle individual differences in the speed with which significant life events are reflected in dreams – for example, an amputation being reflected almost immediately in the dream images of the self in about one-third of patients, weeks or months later in another one-third, and not at all in still another one-third (Brugger Reference Brugger2008; Mulder et al. Reference Mulder, Hochstenbach, Dijkstra and Geertzen2008). Or, how would the mnemonics-dream analogy deal with the finding that REM and dreams can be doubly dissociated such that dreams can occur without REM and REM can occur without dreams (Nir & Tononi Reference Nir and Tononi2010; Solms Reference Solms, Pace-Schott, Solms, Blagrove and Harnad2003a; Solms & Turnbull Reference Solms and Turnbull2002)? Obviously, the dream-mnemonics hypothesis needs some serious testing (as Llewellyn would agree; see sect. 7).
It is relevant to consider where other dream analogs lead scientifically. Freud's On aphasia (Reference Freud and Stengel1891/1953), which appeared only a few years before Freud was obliged to abandon neuroscience and become a psychologist, is an especially powerful model for dreams and other twilight phenomena. It prefigures Freud's central psychological contributions, including his work with Joseph Breuer, Studies on hysteria (Reference Breuer, Freud and Strachey1895/1955), in which, it might be noted, a memory theory of hysterical symptoms is proposed (“symptoms are mainly reminiscences”), and a memory therapy is developed for recovering the latent content of body memories (procedural memories, symptoms) into conscious recall. Within a few years, Freud generalized this hypermnesic therapy to dreams, which according to him are “hypermnesic” and which are subject, like hysterical symptoms, to interpretation in which surface semantic contents (“manifest contents,” “the façade”) are interpreted for deeper semantic contents (“latent contents,” “hidden meanings”) (Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi1985; Reference Erdelyi2012; under review; Freud Reference Freud and Strachey1900/1953).
Many of the aphasia phenomena observed in the neurological clinic are clearly not memory consolidation techniques but outright failures of normal memory. For example, “fusions” (Freud Reference Freud and Stengel1891/1953, p. 22) of different elements (within few years to be known in psychoanalysis as condensations) are often obtained – for example, Vutter for Vater (father) [and] Mutter (mother) – along with displacements of meaning (e.g., pencil is rendered as pen, or Berlin as Potsdam). Also, target items that are inaccessible to declarative memory sometimes appear as procedural enactments (e.g., cutting motions for the inaccessible word scissors [Werner Reference Werner1956, p. 349]). It is unlikely that memory errors of this sort have the function of consolidating memories; on the contrary, these errors, as in dreams, probably arise from memory defects resulting from resource insufficiency (Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi2012; under review). The very same kinds of errors are found in subliminal perception (Bartlett Reference Bartlett1932; Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi1996; Reference Erdelyi2012; under review; Fisher Reference Fisher1988; Pötz 1917; Werner Reference Werner1956).
Jokes, on which Freud (Reference Freud and Strachey1905/1958) published a monograph only a few years after the Interpretation of dreams, are usually ignored in both the psychoanalytic and experimental literatures but actually provide a powerful methodological and theoretical tool for the understanding of twilight phenomena. Freud himself thought of jokes as significantly homologous to dreams – the dream-work distortions (omissions, hints and allusions, displacements, condensations, plastic [imagistic] representation, dramatization [behavioral or procedural enactments], and symbolization) are the same in jokes, in which context he called them the joke-work. Primary-process cognition (e.g., hyperassociativity and wishful thinking; failures of logic, of reality testing, and of linear time; the coexistence of opposites; concretistic representation; and the absence of morality) are prevalent in dreams and in jokes (also, in schizophrenic thinking). Through jokes, a “psychophysics of the third ear” can be implemented that proves jokes – and dreams by extension – are not “transparent”: Sensitivity to latent contents, which may increase over time with effort, can be precisely measured (e.g., through the sensitivity index, d′) and marked individual differences demonstrated. (Some of us are more insightful to latent contents than are others [e.g., Bergstein & Erdelyi Reference Bergstein and Erdelyi2008].) Jokes, also, have powerful methodological implications for mainstream content-analytic approaches to dream meanings. For example, jokes prove that we can reliably count meanings in the manifest content and miss the meaning that counts in the latent content (by not “getting” the joke). The joke-dream analogy has not, however, been parlayed into a ludic-function hypothesis of dreaming.
My basic point, in conclusion, is not to cast doubt on the surface resemblances between mnemonic techniques and dreams but to raise questions about what new scientific contribution this particular analogy offers for the understanding of dreams. The mnemonic analogy need not be parlayed, and perhaps should not be parlayed without exigent testing, into a mnemonic theory of dreams.
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I would like to raise the question of whether attempts, like the target article's, to spell out the function of dreams tend to be premature just-so stories that show insufficient deference to the null hypothesis at the beginning and a neglect of falsifiability at the end. In this case, in particular, an analogy – ancient mnemonic techniques – is shown to bear similarities to consolidation processes presumed to be implemented by rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming. My question is whether the mnemonic analogy can serve as a scientific model that both informs and delimits the REM-function hypothesis of dreaming. Actually, dreams are like many things, including aphasia, subliminal perception, hysterical symptoms, schizophrenia, jokes, daydreams, poetry, Bartlettian and Freudian reconstruction, and, yes, also mnemonic techniques.
Llewellyn does not try sufficiently to test out her proposals against modern research findings in dream psychology (an admittedly sparse corpus, in view of the massive neglect of the subject of dreams by cognitive psychology for decades). Still, some specific research-based questions come to mind. How does the mnemonic analogy bear on the important modern finding – glancingly alluded to in her article (sect. 4.2.4, para. 5) of a U-shaped function describing the incorporation of awake experiences in dreams over, roughly, a one-week window (with maximal dream incorporation occurring a day or two after awake experiences – the day-residue effect – and about a week after the awake experiences) (e.g., Blagrove et al. Reference Blagrove, Fouquet, Henley-Einion, Pace-Schott, Davies, Neuschaffer and Turnbull2011a; Nielsen & Powell Reference Nielsen and Powell1988a; Nielsen et al. Reference Nielsen, Kuiken, Alain, Stenstrom and Powell2004). Or, how would the mnemonic hypothesis handle individual differences in the speed with which significant life events are reflected in dreams – for example, an amputation being reflected almost immediately in the dream images of the self in about one-third of patients, weeks or months later in another one-third, and not at all in still another one-third (Brugger Reference Brugger2008; Mulder et al. Reference Mulder, Hochstenbach, Dijkstra and Geertzen2008). Or, how would the mnemonics-dream analogy deal with the finding that REM and dreams can be doubly dissociated such that dreams can occur without REM and REM can occur without dreams (Nir & Tononi Reference Nir and Tononi2010; Solms Reference Solms, Pace-Schott, Solms, Blagrove and Harnad2003a; Solms & Turnbull Reference Solms and Turnbull2002)? Obviously, the dream-mnemonics hypothesis needs some serious testing (as Llewellyn would agree; see sect. 7).
It is relevant to consider where other dream analogs lead scientifically. Freud's On aphasia (Reference Freud and Stengel1891/1953), which appeared only a few years before Freud was obliged to abandon neuroscience and become a psychologist, is an especially powerful model for dreams and other twilight phenomena. It prefigures Freud's central psychological contributions, including his work with Joseph Breuer, Studies on hysteria (Reference Breuer, Freud and Strachey1895/1955), in which, it might be noted, a memory theory of hysterical symptoms is proposed (“symptoms are mainly reminiscences”), and a memory therapy is developed for recovering the latent content of body memories (procedural memories, symptoms) into conscious recall. Within a few years, Freud generalized this hypermnesic therapy to dreams, which according to him are “hypermnesic” and which are subject, like hysterical symptoms, to interpretation in which surface semantic contents (“manifest contents,” “the façade”) are interpreted for deeper semantic contents (“latent contents,” “hidden meanings”) (Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi1985; Reference Erdelyi2012; under review; Freud Reference Freud and Strachey1900/1953).
Many of the aphasia phenomena observed in the neurological clinic are clearly not memory consolidation techniques but outright failures of normal memory. For example, “fusions” (Freud Reference Freud and Stengel1891/1953, p. 22) of different elements (within few years to be known in psychoanalysis as condensations) are often obtained – for example, Vutter for Vater (father) [and] Mutter (mother) – along with displacements of meaning (e.g., pencil is rendered as pen, or Berlin as Potsdam). Also, target items that are inaccessible to declarative memory sometimes appear as procedural enactments (e.g., cutting motions for the inaccessible word scissors [Werner Reference Werner1956, p. 349]). It is unlikely that memory errors of this sort have the function of consolidating memories; on the contrary, these errors, as in dreams, probably arise from memory defects resulting from resource insufficiency (Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi2012; under review). The very same kinds of errors are found in subliminal perception (Bartlett Reference Bartlett1932; Erdelyi Reference Erdelyi1996; Reference Erdelyi2012; under review; Fisher Reference Fisher1988; Pötz 1917; Werner Reference Werner1956).
Jokes, on which Freud (Reference Freud and Strachey1905/1958) published a monograph only a few years after the Interpretation of dreams, are usually ignored in both the psychoanalytic and experimental literatures but actually provide a powerful methodological and theoretical tool for the understanding of twilight phenomena. Freud himself thought of jokes as significantly homologous to dreams – the dream-work distortions (omissions, hints and allusions, displacements, condensations, plastic [imagistic] representation, dramatization [behavioral or procedural enactments], and symbolization) are the same in jokes, in which context he called them the joke-work. Primary-process cognition (e.g., hyperassociativity and wishful thinking; failures of logic, of reality testing, and of linear time; the coexistence of opposites; concretistic representation; and the absence of morality) are prevalent in dreams and in jokes (also, in schizophrenic thinking). Through jokes, a “psychophysics of the third ear” can be implemented that proves jokes – and dreams by extension – are not “transparent”: Sensitivity to latent contents, which may increase over time with effort, can be precisely measured (e.g., through the sensitivity index, d′) and marked individual differences demonstrated. (Some of us are more insightful to latent contents than are others [e.g., Bergstein & Erdelyi Reference Bergstein and Erdelyi2008].) Jokes, also, have powerful methodological implications for mainstream content-analytic approaches to dream meanings. For example, jokes prove that we can reliably count meanings in the manifest content and miss the meaning that counts in the latent content (by not “getting” the joke). The joke-dream analogy has not, however, been parlayed into a ludic-function hypothesis of dreaming.
My basic point, in conclusion, is not to cast doubt on the surface resemblances between mnemonic techniques and dreams but to raise questions about what new scientific contribution this particular analogy offers for the understanding of dreams. The mnemonic analogy need not be parlayed, and perhaps should not be parlayed without exigent testing, into a mnemonic theory of dreams.