Dreams

In my opinion, there's not much in the way of philosophy in this topic, but the psychological, linguistic and cultural aspects were thought to give enough to talk about.  The Source was adamant that dreams are useful tools for analyzing and improving our lives, saying this is mentioned in great literature from ancient philosophers to Renaissance poets to the Bible.  In these sources, dreams are often considered to be prophetic; we just need to know how to interpret them to reveal their prophecies.

The Dedicated Writer was not convinced at all.  He stated that there is nothing supernatural at all about dreams, rather they are depositories of unfulfilled desires and in sleep we have access to that unconscious realm.  He mentioned the birth of psychoanalysis and its early use of dream analysis as interesting, but not necessarily very useful or helpful in general because of the highly personal nature of night dreams.

Our Doctor noted the lack of distinction in Spanish between "sleep" and "dream", both being "sueño".  It could be there is a wider meaning in "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" than in its standard English translation of "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters", although there is no clear pun or loss of meaning in keeping close to the wording of the original title.  He also briefly spoke of psychoanalysis and its attempts to reach the secrets we keep even from ourselves.  In his opinion, night dreams are something clinical, without particular meaning.  The Source countered that night dreams were more real than daydreams, precisely because they are not under our conscious control.  Night dreams are our real thoughts, but daydreams are pure fantasy.

The Organizer set about differentiating in his preliminary essay and in his first contribution between dream as a sleep phenomenon and its use as a synonym for desire or ambition.  This occupied his thinking for the majority of his participation.  He first hastened to make clear that dreams might be used to refer to ambitions or can stimulate them, but they are decidedly not the same thing.  Later he mentioned the term pipe-dream and the phrase "the American Dream", also discussed in his essay, and wondered why we dream at all.  Surely, there is some evolutionary benefit to the activity or it would have disappeared from animal brains.  Studies and observation have shown the necessity of sleep, although there is still some question about what actually happens during that down time, and also the necessity of having the level of sleep that allows dreaming.  Without that, we break down.  The Organizer lamented the lack of problem solving that goes on in dreams, saying that the connection with the sub- and unconscious should give us an obvious benefit, but we do not frequently dream of solutions to our problems, at least not real or workable ones.

A New Participant said that night dreams are, in fact, as fantastical as daydreams, but they are based on repressed wishes.  The use of dream diaries in therapy is to gain perspective on oneself and one's desires.  She also commented later that goals that are excessively difficult to reach are a sort of strategy to avoid disappointment; either they are not taken seriously from the beginning, or the focus on reaching those impossible goals removes attention from other problems.

Our Doctor returned to the fray, using that without dreams, a person is dead.  Because of the physical need for sleep and dream time, this statement is both metaphorical and literal.  He told us that dreams cannot predict the future because there are always factors we do not know yet and new discoveries to be made, and continued by cautioning us against dreaming too much and neglecting our present realities.  We should dream just enough to see where we want to go.

The Organizer could not convince the group of the necessary difference, to his mind, between night dreaming, fantasy and ambition, but his final word was to insist that dreams are by their nature impossible desires.  If they were not impossible, they would be plans.