ABSTRACT
“Dreaming is another kind of remembering” (Freud, 1918/1955). Maximum incorporation of day-events tends to occur in dreams of the same night (the day-residue effect), with incorporations declining for some 7 ± 2 days and then, surprisingly, reversing course for a few nights (the dream-lag effect). Numerous interactions and exceptions, however, moderate research outcomes. Dream incorporations of drastic body events (e.g., an amputation) are particularly variable in character and time-course (see Brugger), and exhibit a variety of defensive distortions. For example, two women with spinal cord injury simultaneously evidenced denial and awareness of their paralysis: Their dreams regularly featured their wheel-chairs but typically they pushed rather than sat in their chairs. There is evidence for Freud’s claim that “dreams are hypermnesic,” with dreams correctly using terms that the awake subject fails to recognize. Dreams may be leading, lagging, and concurrent indicators of awake events. Long-term repeated recalls of “The War of the Ghosts” by two children, Karina and Maya, produced an abundance of distortions such as Bartlett obtained with his Cambridge students. It turns out that Bartlettian distortions are identical (but for motive) with the distortions identified by Freud in dreams and awake cognition. Thus, “dream work” distortions are not restricted to dreams but comprise a subset of distortions found in awake cognition. Memory (and dreams) are associatively structured, with constituent elements forming “spheres of meaning.”
