ABSTRACT
Sufficient data have been accumulated through sleep and dream research to permit a re-examination of the recollected dream and the concurrently occurring phasic activity of the REM state. This chapter contends that the REM sleep dream, strictly from the standpoint of manifest content, may be examined from both a narrative and a sensory-motor level. Equally exhaustive information can be elicited with respect to the dreamer’s recollection of the sensory-motor activity in the dream or the more traditional description of the dreamed narrative. The manifest content contains both a narrative story line, or plot, and a plethora of detail that is equivalent to the dreamer’s waking experience of the sensory world and its proprioceptive feedback. These details are readily elicited with careful questioning. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that the dream re-creates the waking perceptual experiences of the dreamer with a degree of verisimilitude not usually appreciated. Far from bizarre, waking perceptual experience reappears in the dream in remarkably lifelike detail.
