Keeping a Dream Diary

[Dekan]

I often wake up, with the memory of a dream very strong in my mind. However, within a few minutes, the memory slips away, and I can't remember what the dream was about.

 

This is worrying, because the dream seemed, at the time, to be very striking and significant. But now it's lost.

To avoid this loss, I could keep a notepad and pen by the bedside. Then on waking up, quickly write down details of the dream.

 

Would that be a good thing to do though? If dreams quickly disappear from memory, perhaps that's because they're meant to. So keeping them in memory, by writing them down in a "dream diary", might not be good for mental health.

 

Do any posters on these boards keep a dream diary? If so, what effect has it had, and would you recommend the practice?

[DrmDoc]

I often wake up, with the memory of a dream very strong in my mind. However, within a few minutes, the memory slips away, and I can't remember what the dream was about.

 

This is worrying, because the dream seemed, at the time, to be very striking and significant. But now it's lost.

To avoid this loss, I could keep a notepad and pen by the bedside. Then on waking up, quickly write down details of the dream.

 

Would that be a good thing to do though? If dreams quickly disappear from memory, perhaps that's because they're meant to. So keeping them in memory, by writing them down in a "dream diary", might not be good for mental health.

 

Do any posters on these boards keep a dream diary? If so, what effect has it had, and would you recommend the practice?

There are some who might argue that dreams are forgotten because they are not meant to be remembered. However, the reason why we forget our dreams quickly involves the evolved nature of memory and the incongruity of memory with experiences that are not concurrent with real physical/material sensory experiences. Succintly, memory was evolved for the real physical/material wellbeing of ancestral animals. Our animal ancestors evolved memory through the experience of influences that had a real physical/material impact on their survival. Dreams do not involved real sensory experiences concurrent in physical/material reality. Consequently, certain memory-associated areas of the brain do not become active when the brain is dreaming because those areas are not stimulated by the faux physical/material sensory experiences of dreams. We forget our dreams quickly because their experience is not concurrent with true physicality. The lack of real physical/material stimuli concurrent with the experiences in our dreams also explains why we experience a state what many mistakenly refer to as sleep paralysis. That state is more accurately described as muscle atonia, which isn't paralysis but a relaxed condition of muscle elasticity and readiness.

 

There is evidence suggesting that what we remember about our dreams form during the arousal process as real physical/material stimuli reenters brain structure and stimulates those areas associated with memory formation. This suggests that what we remember about our dreams suggests the way our waking-state brain interprets what it believes it experienced amid sleep. The inference is that those experiences amid sleep do not contain the imagery and experiences we recall as dreams until our waking-state brain interprets them that way--as a way, perhaps, of making the experience relatable to conscious experience.

 

What this all suggests is that what you remember most about your dream is what your conscious mind likely perceived as most relevant or relatable to your conscious experience. However, I wouldn't suggest obsessing over remebering them without learning how to decipher whatever relevance or meaning they may have. Why remember what may not be important enough to understand? If, however, you remain interested in keeping a diary, I would suggest keeping a digital recorder at bedside for later diary transcription. I hope this helps.

[Dekan]

Our animal ancestors evolved memory through the experience of influences that had a real physical/material impact on their survival. Dreams do not involved real sensory experiences concurrent in physical/material reality. Consequently, certain memory-associated areas of the brain do not become active when the brain is dreaming because those areas are not stimulated by the faux physical/material sensory experiences of dreams. We forget our dreams quickly because their experience is not concurrent with true physicality.

 

 

Thanks DrmDoc - that seems an excellent explanation of the memory-loss associated with dreams.

 

Suppose a caveman was actually attacked by a sabretoothed tiger. The caveman would suffer physical injuries. Caused by the biting and slashing of the tiger. If despite these injuries, the caveman survived the attack, it would be very advantageous for him to retain a permanent memory of it. So as to warn him against any future repetition.

 

His memory, backed up by the physical experience of the attack , would be under strong pressure to record the event as: "Real physical danger! Survival threat! Don't forget!"

 

Whereas, suppose the caveman only dreamed of being attacked by a tiger. As a kind of hypothetical possibility. The dream wouldn't be backed by any physical experience. So there'd be no pressure, or even mechanism, to remember the dream.

 

Have I got that right, or am I being too simplistic?

[Ophiolite]

In regard to your original question, I can see no harm in maintaining a dream diary as long as

a) You do not become obsessive about it

b) You do not start investing your dreams with magical significance

c) You don't bore people at cocktail parties with accounts of your dreams

 

I kept one for a period of times in my early teens, after reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. (By the way, don't waste your time reading it - here is the executive summary: if you spend your time analysing sexually frustrated Viennese women, you may erroneously form the opinion that all humans are sexually frustrated.)

 

The tape recorder is a good idea since, as you know, the dream memory fades rapidly.

 

There is a story that Winston Churchill kept a notepad at his bedside for jotting down any thoughts that had occured to him during the night. On one occassion he had a dream in which the meaning of everything became abundantly clear. He woke from the dream, wrote down the answer, then returned to sleep. Awakening in the morning he remembered that the dream had occured, but not its specific content. He turned with a sense of excitement and anticipation to his note pad where he found writtne the words: Brussel Sprouts.

[Dekan]

In regard to your original question, I can see no harm in maintaining a dream diary as long as

a) You do not become obsessive about it

b) You do not start investing your dreams with magical significance

c) You don't bore people at cocktail parties with accounts of your dreams

 

I kept one for a period of times in my early teens, after reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. (By the way, don't waste your time reading it - here is the executive summary: if you spend your time analysing sexually frustrated Viennese women, you may erroneously form the opinion that all humans are sexually frustrated.)

 

The tape recorder is a good idea since, as you know, the dream memory fades rapidly.

 

There is a story that Winston Churchill kept a notepad at his bedside for jotting down any thoughts that had occured to him during the night. On one occassion he had a dream in which the meaning of everything became abundantly clear. He woke from the dream, wrote down the answer, then returned to sleep. Awakening in the morning he remembered that the dream had occured, but not its specific content. He turned with a sense of excitement and anticipation to his note pad where he found writtne the words: Brussel Sprouts.

[Ophiolite]

Well Dekan, I thought I had made quite a good post, but it wasn't good enough to duplicate.

 

Did you want to make a comment?

[Dekan]

Thanks Ophiolite.

 

I like your story about Winston Churchill's dream. An uncanny insight into the future burgeoning of the EU: "Brussels sprouts".

 

Freud was probably right you know - most humans are sexually frustrated. Why else, all the porn on the Internet?

 

I don't think I'll bother with the dream diary - if it was really any use to the mind, wouldn't the Greeks and Romans have found out about it long ago. They came up with some useful mind ideas, like the "Memory Palace" thing.

[Ophiolite]

I like your story about Winston Churchill's dream. An uncanny insight into the future burgeoning of the EU: "Brussels sprouts".

Remember, I described it as a story. I have not got satisfactory confirmation that it is true. (But it should be!)

Freud was probably right you know - most humans are sexually frustrated.

You should stay in more.

 

- if it was really any use to the mind, wouldn't the Greeks and Romans have found out about it long ago.

They did miss out on one or two things.

[DrmDoc]

Thanks DrmDoc - that seems an excellent explanation of the memory-loss associated with dreams.

 

Suppose a caveman was actually attacked by a sabretoothed tiger. The caveman would suffer physical injuries. Caused by the biting and slashing of the tiger. If despite these injuries, the caveman survived the attack, it would be very advantageous for him to retain a permanent memory of it. So as to warn him against any future repetition.

 

His memory, backed up by the physical experience of the attack , would be under strong pressure to record the event as: "Real physical danger! Survival threat! Don't forget!"

 

Whereas, suppose the caveman only dreamed of being attacked by a tiger. As a kind of hypothetical possibility. The dream wouldn't be backed by any physical experience. So there'd be no pressure, or even mechanism, to remember the dream.

 

Have I got that right, or am I being too simplistic?

Perhaps; however, I don't believe there was ever a time when ancestral animals had to make a distinction between real experience and dream experience. It's likely that the brain structures associated with memory formation evolved in an environment where real experience was the only experience. In other words, the brain structures associated with memory evolve inconjunction with afferent stimuli from the actual sensory structures of the body. During the dreaming phase of sleep, much of that actual sensory stimuli is muted by deactivations in the brain stem at the onset of atonia. Without unmuted stimuli--which informs the brain that its sensory experiences are real--those brain structures associated memory formation remain understimulated throughout the dreaming phase of sleep. The prefrontal cortex, for example, experiences a state of low-activation (hypofrontality) at the onset of dreaming. This suggests that our dream experiences do not generate the stimuli that our dreaming brain identifies as emerging from the actual sensory experiences of the body. Our animal ancestors likely didn't have to make a distinction between reality and dreaming because their brains where predisposed to stimuli originating from the real physical/material sensory experiences of the body.