Memories of dreams

[footnotetoplato]

Based on experience this morning, it seems to me that while we have a tendency to forget dreams shortly after waking, they are not truly forgotten, and can be recalled in other dreams. It's almost as if there's a partition in the brain between dream memory and normal memory. At times, like shortly after waking, it's possible to access both,

Comments

[osymandias]

I've often wondered about this. I know the sensation you mean, but I've never been certain whether it's sympomatic of something like you describe - a partitioned memory - or whether the recollection of other dreams in dreams is part of the dream itself. I think my mind tends to run towards it being the latter.

I suppose it could be tested if you could somehow get information from the half dream state onto another medium before waking and losing it altogether, thus having something to test the recollection against.

[footnotetoplato]

I don't tend to realise that it's a recollection of other dreams until I'm quasi-awake, though, when I can look back on it.

I'm pretty sure that things actually agree with my earlier dreams. In fact, the dream that prompted this involved the exam schools. This is all fine and dandy. But when I was kind of awake just after finishing the dream I realised that the layout of the building was not the real one, but instead agreed with the layout they'd had in a dream I had several months ago.

My earliest memory of something which may be exhibiting this effect (or may not) is, during a dream, 'remembering' that I could fly. I'm not sure on this one - on the one hand I then began flying in exactly the same way I had done in previous dreams, but possibly I could invent the sensation without memory. Still, I don't think I usually get the "why didn't I think of that earlier?" feeling in dreams, so I incline towards believing I remembered it.

[the_marquis]

Well in my experience certain bits of dreams turn up over and over, or with variations on a theme, and I have been aware whilst dreaming that I have dreamt the experience before; but without realising in the dream that I must be asleep and dreaming.

[aranelcharis]

Yes. Exactly. Sometimes I have elaborations of dreams I had before, which I haven't remembered until I've woken up.

Sometimes (which is the strangest feeling of all) I change my dreams in the "half dream state" to fit my earlier dreams, which I've forgotten until I dream something similar again.

And, like aster_dw, sometimes when I'm awake something triggers my memory of a dream which I've had long ago and didn't remember until then...and it is gone as quickly as it comes to mind. Odd is the right word for it...

[aster_dw]

It's pretty much the same for me. I can dream about remembering my old dreams, which I actually had. I also sometimes manage to enter a slightly dream-like state during the day, when I, due to some almost unrelated cues from the external world, can get vivid recollections about dreams that I had years ago and had forgotten/failed to remember at the time.

It's very odd...

[footnotetoplato]

I don't think I've ever had the cues bringing things back during the day. That's pretty cool.

[shanith]

There is also the point when you see something and this then opens the doorway to the dreams you've had. You suddenly remember a whole raft of details or dream events that you had previously not recalled.

The idea of a partitions seems apt.

Oh and I had a fantastic dream that we were all at Hellsgarth the other night ;-)