Are Dreams Narrative Experiences? How Assumptions About Fictional Narratives Shape Debates on Dream Experiences
Topoi December 3, 2025 Gaia Mizzon, Jennifer Windt
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.