Forms of Dreaming

Abstract

A classification-rating system for formal anomalies in dream experience focuses on the contribution a cognitive psychology of dream bizarreness might make to the question of whether dreaming is a form of thinking. In Part I, two traditional issues in the psychology of dreams—dreaming as “hallucination” and dreaming as symbolic thought—are connected via phenomenological method and cognitive theory. Pans II and III present the relatively infrequent categories of typical dream bizarreness and demonstrate that (a) in departing from realism dreaming tends toward a delirium—visual hallucinosis and cognitive clouding—and seems distinct from schizophrenic, psychedelic, or meditative states and (b) if dream anomalies show a symbolic transformation process, then the roots of that process are visual-spatial, not verbal-propositional.