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Old Dreams

catseye

catseye

Old lady trouser-smell with yesterday's knickers
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
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Location
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My brother has recently sold the family home and moved out. He came to visit me last weekend, bearing a box full of my old things that haven't seen the light of day in about forty years. One of the things was an old school exercise book in which I'd kept a dream diary during 1978. I'd written the dreams down in some detail, also the mood or feeling that the dream engendered. I must have been reading a lot of 'dream interpretation' books in those days (I was a teenaged girl, it's what we did).

I'm just now starting to read back through the book and it's interesting that, in some cases I can remember events that sparked off the dream (often noted) but not the dream itself. I know dreams don't enter into long term memory, so that's not usual, but it's strange reading an entire book of, basically, ideas, none of which I remember having.

I'll report back if anything comes of this...
 
catseye said:
... I know dreams don't enter into long term memory ...
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I know they do - but only to the extent you consciously recall the dream upon waking.

I have memories of dream scenes, extended story lines which may or may not represent entire dreams, and even series of dreams from multiple nights that cross-reference each other as if they were distinct episodes within a longer narrative.
 
While I was working on a university paper some years ago I dreamed about two of the people I was writing about, whilst (in the dream) standing on a big open stretch of land that was part building site.

So now every time I drive along there I remember those two clowns and their deceptive campaign.
 
pandacracker said:
I've also had dreams about dreams I've had in the past, even going a bit lucid and realising in the dream that I'm dreaming something I dreamed years ago.
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Same here - particularly years ago during my intensive lucid dreaming (experimentation) phase.

I've sometimes 'frozen' a current dream and proactively edited / modified scenes and characters to coordinate the current dream with some earlier dream motif or narrative for which the current one seems to be a latest installment (as opposed to an independent production).

NOTE: My earlier comment above was directed toward dreams in long term *waking* memory. I've had situations while dreaming where I've recalled earlier dreams that I couldn't have deliberately invoked while awake. The implication is that there's a dimension of awake / dreaming along which recall is differentiated.
 
Coal said:
S'funny my dream have been invaded of late with variations on work themes, but the last couple of nights a small persistent dream-scape of three small pools in woods 'near my house' has resurfaced, the location and topography of which are semi-located in the real landscape.
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I've noticed something about my dreaming and dream recall over the last decade, but I need to set the context to describe it.

First ... I tend to accept the implications of recent research indicating dreams are a side-effect of memory housekeeping during the daily sleep phase. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Second ... I'm noted for a propensity to operate via a lateral or metaphorical thinking style, which results in (e.g.) a lot of off-the-wall associations, referential leaps, and / or surrealistic puns. It's therefore difficult for me to consider a particular object of attention (thing, scene, story line) without my mind's eye's peripheral vision sensing allusive analogues receding in all directions.

Having said that ...

I've noticed in recent years that it's more difficult to remember details from what I was dreaming just prior to waking up. Conversely, it's increasingly obvious - sometimes blatantly so - that what I do recall has lateral / metaphorical connections to experiences from the immediately previous day(s).
 
EnolaGaia said:
First ... I tend to accept the implications of recent research indicating dreams are a side-effect of memory housekeeping during the daily sleep phase. This makes a lot of sense to me.
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Concur, it's intuitively fits and research shows the importance of REM sleep for short term memory retention and deep sleep for long term memory. It's a reasonable inference that the transation from one to the other occurs somewhere during the sleep cycle.

I have a suspicion that making too strong an effort to recall dreams after waking may not be beneficial for long term memory, but I've no basis for this hypothesis, only that to studiously recall dreams may be interfering with the normal process of long term memory caching.

EnolaGaia said:
I've noticed in recent years that it's more difficult to remember details from what I was dreaming just prior to waking up. Conversely, it's increasingly obvious - sometimes blatantly so - that what I do recall has lateral / metaphorical connections to experiences from the immediately previous day(s).
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I've experienced this lately, with a gradual tailing off over a week of holiday, of lateral connections to the day-job and more specifically the hardware design task I'm embedded in. The patterns are usually abstract but recognisable as being linked to the task. Oddly this has been in a repeating pattering of three of 'something' and my familiar pools in the wood are a trio, and I'd hazard this is my brain's way of segueing out of the stress pattern dreams into the familiar, and possibly a slight frustration due to a planned fishing trip being rained off. And possibly a hint to go fishing tomorrow and relax.
 
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I can remember some dreams that had when I was a child/teenager - two in particular which I had several times which is possibly why I remember them? One of which stopped abruptly after the real-life situation changed, and one of which was always slightly different but featured the same main theme, and which thankfully I've not had for years.

And I too have had the sense - while dreaming - that I've dreamt this before. (Not with the abovementioned dreams, mind you).
 
There are a few dreams which have stayed with me over the years (one that still makes me shiver, and I dreamed it over forty years ago), make no mistake, but many of the dreams in this 'dream diary' don't inspire so much as a glimmer of recognition. In fact most of them are the typical 'teenage wish fulfillment' dreams. What is most interesting is the childlike nature of many of them (I was just heading towards leaving school, so still a 'child' technically, but if I hadn't gone on to A levels I would have been heading for the world of work at this point), and it's very clear to me now, on rereading, just how 'young' I really was!
 
One of my earliest memories from childhood is of a dream, in fact two dreams. One was about a park where there were dinosaurs living (this was the 70s, pre-Jurassic park) but I was so young I didn't know the word prehistoric so it was called a Tarzan Zoo for some reason. I think Tarzan was on tv at that time, maybe. The other was about being in a flat at the top of a tower block while the city was on fire. I don't remember it being a scary dream though. I must have only been a couple of years old for both but I remember them clearly.

Later in life I kept a dream diary too and if I read it now I can recall most of the dreams quite clearly. I've also had that strange dream where I remember a previous dream that I had never recalled while being awake. When I wake up I then remember both dreams. But I'm not sure if the memory is just a part of the dream and actually didn't exist previously. Strange things, dreams.
 
Bokononist said:
One of my earliest memories from childhood is of a dream, in fact two dreams. One was about a park where there were dinosaurs living (this was the 70s, pre-Jurassic park) but I was so young I didn't know the word prehistoric so it was called a Tarzan Zoo for some reason. I think Tarzan was on tv at that time, maybe. The other was about being in a flat at the top of a tower block while the city was on fire. I don't remember it being a scary dream though. I must have only been a couple of years old for both but I remember them clearly.

Later in life I kept a dream diary too and if I read it now I can recall most of the dreams quite clearly. I've also had that strange dream where I remember a previous dream that I had never recalled while being awake. When I wake up I then remember both dreams. But I'm not sure if the memory is just a part of the dream and actually didn't exist previously. Strange things, dreams.
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Could it have been a half-remembered synthesis of the 1967 classic (Ron Ely) TV Tarzan episode "Track of the Dinosaur" ?
 
This is an interesting thread.

When I was a young boy aged from 10 to maybe 13 or 14 I used to have a recurring dream in which a pretty long haired young girl who was wearing a cream / white outfit used to appear. I used to see her lips moving as she spoke but I never heard any sound, a bit like watching television with the sound turned off, she used to smile a lot and had a very nice smile. Nothing amazing, exciting or scary happened apart from her sitting their and talking and smiling I must have had this dream 10 or 20 times over the 3-4 year period. Today I am 54 and I can still see her in my memory as clearly as if it was last night.

Now this is where it gets a bit odd.

I have 2 daughters aged 8 & 4. ... Earlier this week they were playing at dressing up using what ever was around to be princesses, fairies etc. My eldest daughter wrapped herself in a cream colour bed sheet and draped it over her shoulders as if it was a long gown with a trailing train behind it. After a while she sat down on the sofa, still wrapped in the sheet and looked over at me and smiled. Some of you may know the sort of smile that a little girl will give her father, full of happiness and unconditional love.

At that moment she looked exactly like the young girl from my dreams when I was young. I mean exactly, the long hair, the position, the smile, the eyes, the look and the nice warm feeling it gave me to see her.

Probably co-incidence or maybe my mind is playing tricks with me over the passage of several decades but if it isn't then I met my daughter some 35 years before she was born.
 
XBergMann said:
Probably co-incidence or maybe my mind is playing tricks with me over the passage of several decades but if it isn't then I met my daughter some 35 years before she was born.
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Can relate. Several decades ago I was walking home from my sister's house, where I'd had xmas lunch with her, her husband and their baby boy.

I hadn't been drinking but everyone else had so I declined the offer of an escort as it was still daylight, and took a route across some landscaped fields.

As I started walking on the path a little dark-haired girl appeared beside me. She was prattling away as little girls do and I walked on, half-listening. Can't remember what she said but she was looking forward eagerly to something.

It didn't seem strange to me that she was out on her own on xmas day and I didn't look around for her family. This only dawned on me later.

When we reached the main road she said she had to stop there and would see me later. I waved goodbye and carried on.

This puzzled me for years. I put it down to eating to eating too much!

A few years later my sister and husband's second child was born, a girl with a full mop of dark hair. When she grew up a bit she looked exactly like the little girl I'd seen on that xmas day.

So yeah, I can relate because I met my niece years before she was born.
 
I've started having odd half-dreams as I fall asleep. I'm having trouble getting off to sleep at the moment so maybe it's just come to the fore, but it consists of me thinking something like 'those tins need putting away', accompanied by the memory of a pile of tins in the kitchen, and then a gradual dawning consciousness that there are no tins in the kitchen. I don't remember ever having these thoughts as I fell asleep before, I'm no stranger to the hypnopompic and hypnogogic experiences, but this merging of thought, dream and life is new.
 
catseye said:
I've started having odd half-dreams as I fall asleep. I'm having trouble getting off to sleep at the moment so maybe it's just come to the fore, but it consists of me thinking something like 'those tins need putting away', accompanied by the memory of a pile of tins in the kitchen, and then a gradual dawning consciousness that there are no tins in the kitchen. I don't remember ever having these thoughts as I fell asleep before, I'm no stranger to the hypnopompic and hypnogogic experiences, but this merging of thought, dream and life is new.
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Try controlling it next time by thinking something silly like ... I wish those tins in the kitchen would stop dancing ... then you will go to sleep and dream about dancing tins which will be great fun.
 
I previously described a 20 something girl I dreamed of regularly many years ago but could not recognise. "Heard" nothing further from her in years, but she reappeared suddenly last night out of nowhere. Looked identical to previously except her hair was longer.
She: Hi I've come back to see you.
Hugs me (never touched me before)
Me: Hello - your hair's grown.
She smiles.
Me: Tell me who you are .
She: You know who. I'm 32 - think hard.
Suddenly it all fitted. Her looks, her accent her name everything.
She: You know now - sorry I couldn't make it.
Hugs me so tightly I couldn't breathe.
She don't worry I'm fine. Really. I'll see you when the time comes.
Smiles and disappears.
I wake up sobbing. Finally mystery solved. It was my unborn daughter.
 
Morning, this is appropriate.( Though wether it's ok, on this thread, I leave it up to you!!). I wonder wether our dreams are not only the way our brains " download?" download what we went through our day, but also what we read or seen on to/online. I have had a series of dreams, whilst my missus and son where watching GBBO, I went upstairs and watched a YouTube video about The Enfield Poltgeist. That night dreamt that I was in a house with some peeps at work, which was haunted. I wasn't scared, more like I was watching it!!!
 
catseye said:
I've started having odd half-dreams as I fall asleep. I'm having trouble getting off to sleep at the moment so maybe it's just come to the fore, but it consists of me thinking something like 'those tins need putting away', accompanied by the memory of a pile of tins in the kitchen, and then a gradual dawning consciousness that there are no tins in the kitchen. I don't remember ever having these thoughts as I fell asleep before, I'm no stranger to the hypnopompic and hypnogogic experiences, but this merging of thought, dream and life is new.
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Techy and I have different work patterns. I'm often up earlier than he is and more tired at night. I'll be dropping off while we're watching TV and will have often highly amusing micro-dreams.

So when I'm suddenly cycling along a canal towpath for 30 seconds or carrying an Alsatian dog up an escalator it's bedtime.
 
Crankyoldgit62 said:
Morning, this is appropriate.( Though wether it's ok, on this thread, I leave it up to you!!). I wonder wether our dreams are not only the way our brains " download?" download what we went through our day, but also what we read or seen on to/online. I have had a series of dreams, whilst my missus and son where watching GBBO, I went upstairs and watched a YouTube video about The Enfield Poltgeist. That night dreamt that I was in a house with some peeps at work, which was haunted. I wasn't scared, more like I was watching it!!!
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In my dreams I am often 'watching' as if on TV, as well as being a participant. That's about the time I decide I've spent too long on Netflix and turn the screens off for a few days.
 
Another highly entertaining thread! I assume that each of us dreams a great deal, maybe every night/or whenever we are accustomed to sleep? As for myself, I rarely remember my dreams and I have always observed that, unless I make a conscious effort to actually remember the details of a dream, it soon vanishes from my mind as opposed to a "real" waking experience which generally does not. I assume that one of the functions of dreaming is to "purge" the mind of thoughts/feelings which are perhaps unhelpful or maybe upsetting...a kind of therapy, and that it does this very effectively, hence blanking it from our waking memory, I find unfortunately that some rather good dreams are also lost to recall, (which is a trifle unfair if you ask me!) Perhaps we all experience/react to dreams slightly differently, which might render the efforts of those hoping to make generalised observations rather pointless or at best merely generalisations. I have certainly had the experience of friends or family members recounting to me details of quite vivid dreams they have had only to find that years later if the dream comes up in conversation with that same person, they have no recollection of it, this I have taken to confirm my hypothesis of the mind's "purging"...but that's just a suggestion..with dreams who knows??
Neither would I discount the possibility that dreams may provide a glimpse into the past/future or some parallel dimension, the accounts by XBergMann, escargot and the particularly moving and powerful post from PeteS are truly fascinating! I have often experienced a sense of a different, yet familiar reality when I dream, a sense of "recognition"...as in "here I am again...I know this place..the rules are different here to the other place" Amongst fragments of the dreams which I can recall are some truly strange juxtapositions, an example being that, in a recent dream I was wandering about in Knaresborough (a nearby town in Yorkshire, UK) and yet I round a corner and there is a landscape with huge (alpine sized or bigger) snow topped mountains reaching beyond the clouds, it's quite a shock, but somehow I "knew" that these mountains were there..in my dream...it was somehow "familiar".
I can also identify with, and have experienced those dreams where elements from recent experience, or even a TV show can show up but what has always fascinated me are those dreams which are just so absolutely strange that I can find no clue as to how they came into being. I'm not referencing bizarre Salvador Dali dreamscapes or the apparitions and zombies of popular horror...no, these are dreams which are (in some cases) more commonplace, but "wrong" in a much more subtle way and which (for me at least) makes them infinitely more disturbing. I had a dream a month or so ago which was particularly disturbing. I am not disposed to describe it for two principal reasons, firstly.....I hope to forget it and writing it down would render this impossible...there would always be a trace of the horror! and secondly, it would probably not strike any reader as being particularly disturbing at all..perhaps they would just find it odd (I think that which is truly disturbing is that which is unique to the experiencer..."made to measure" if you prefer.
With regard to the intriguing functioning of memory as described by catseye, I am inclined to suggest that this singular "forgetfulness" may not be confined to the realm of dreams. Very recently I was revisiting some of my own song ideas/musical compositions imported to my PC from an old hard disk drive (to me still quite new technology!) To my surprise...(and quite a pleasant surprise...I think like most musicians/songwriters, I find my own output rather unsurprising and not particularly enjoyable to listen back to) I found several songs/ pieces of music which I had completely forgotten...song titles which meant nothing to me...of course I did remember them once I started playing them back, but honestly I could have lost them forever and been none the wiser. I'm really glad I "rediscovered" them!
 
I have noticed that the feeling of remembrance - the warm welcoming feeling of familiarity with an event from the past, is made up ‘on the fly’ during dreaming.

It’s like a trick, to give the dream extra import.
So you perceive , what would be a flight of fancy - fantasy, as meaningful - because it’s seemingly recalling an older or past dream/ memory.

But i think it’s s a kick of chemicals to create a feeling of nostalgia and past experience.

I have found that what I thought was a long dream, with each scene referencing the other to create a complex story was all created at the same time - with the feelings of distance and time and nostalgia giving the impression of depth.
 
Amoradala said:
... It’s like a trick, to give the dream extra import.
So you perceive , what would be a flight of fancy - fantasy, as meaningful - because it’s seemingly recalling an older or past dream/ memory.

But i think it’s s a kick of chemicals to create a feeling of nostalgia and past experience. ...
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I'm confident there are such things as false past references in dreaming. But I'm even more confident this does not cover all such outcomes.

Back in my heavy lucid dreaming period I kept dream journals that allowed me to go back, correlate, and even precisely match later seemingly familiar / nostalgic dream elements and events with prior dreams documented at a previous time.
 
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