Are Dreams Narrative Experiences? How Assumptions About Fictional Narratives Shape Debates on Dream Experiences

Summary

The concept of narrative is widely used in philosophical discussions of dreams, but little attention has been paid to how assumptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the debate. The authors argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves, leading to the use of features of literary fiction as an explanatory framework for understanding dreams and their formation. Focusing on the categories of authorship and composition, they show that divergent philosophical accounts share the unacknowledged assumption that dreams have a narrative structure and that dreaming is a process of narrative construction. The paper lays groundwork for exploring narrative thinking in spontaneous thought during both wakefulness and sleep.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The concept of narrative is widespread in the philosophical literature on dreams. Although several works have examined the putative narrative character of dreams by drawing on narratology, literary theory, and semiotics, there has been virtually no investigation of how preconceptions about the resemblance between fictional narratives and retrospective dream reports have shaped the philosophical debate on dreams and dreaming. This paper aims to address this gap. We argue that there is a pervasive tendency to metonymically assimilate fictional narratives first with dream reports and then with dreams themselves. As a result, features and devices typically associated with literary fiction are frequently used as a speculative explanatory framework to understand dreams and the processes underlying their formation, encoding, and retrieval. To illuminate this tendency, we focus on two central categories in the philosophy of dreaming: authorship and composition. By examining relevant cases in which these categories are employed to support divergent ontological and epistemological claims, we argue that similar accounts rest on a shared—yet frequently unacknowledged—assumption: that dreams exhibit a narrative structure and that dreaming is, at its core, a process of narrative construction. Through our conceptual analysis, we aim to lay the groundwork for further exploration of the emergence of narrative thinking in spontaneous thought, encompassing both wakefulness and sleep.

Tags