How then might this process relate to dreaming. In the previous essays, I have proposed a variety of ways peremptory ideation and dreaming might intertwine. In this essay, as we consider the supportive and enabling dream, we might expect a dream to be given “justification” from the ideational train. This would mean that we tend to set dreams within a broader thematic context. That dream we have about our automobile breaking down might be associated with our daytime concern about finances and with the dream we had two nights ago about the bear that ate our tent, and the dream four nights ago about the large wave that engulfed our home.
The ideational train has taken on the theme of impending physical destruction (precipitated by a fear that our basement will flood in an ongoing rainstorm). These subsequent irrational fears, archaic images and legitimate worries hitch onto the train. The outcome of an envisioned project regarding the purchase of a new boat comes with a faint, but persistent and “irrationally” growing concern about the financing of this purchase and the durability of any boat that we do buy. The somewhat mundane creativity comes in our recognition that we could write off some of the cost of this boat for tax purposes by using it to occasionally “entertain” the most loyal customers of our family business. A somewhat more ambitious outcome might be the abandonment of the boat-purchase option in favor of buying a houseboat and living during the summer months on this boat. Greater creativity would be expressed in the decision to write a short story about domestic mayhem (home repairs) for the local newspaper.
The ideational train might instead be activated by the “unfinished events” that were highlighted by Eugene Gendlin (1986). These events could be associated with trauma, as Levine suggested, or with any unfinished project. As often noted with regard to the so-called Zeigarnik effect, the uncompleted task is often held in memory for a long time. It would not be unusual for this task and Gendlin’s unfinished event to hitch a ride on or prompt the operation of an ideational train. And recruit other passengers along the way.
There is yet another direction in which we can take this exploration of creative incubation. We can traverse time and space ending up in the research laboratory of Aleksandr Luria, the noted Russian neuroscientist. Luria reports on the extraordinary case of a man with infinite memory (Luria, 1987). Known as a Mnemonist, Luria’s subject could not only recall lists of words from many years before but also recall the color of Luria’s tie. The mnemonist reported that he sometimes simply envisioned a street with many store fronts. He would place the word or experience to be remembered in one of the storefront windows and simply wander back along the street to reclaim memory of the object in the store window.
