Our three authors bring this important conclusion back to the findings from their surgery study (as well as a related study regarding group therapy) (Breger, Hunter and Lane, 1971, p. 191):
“Our experience with the subjects in both of the present studies confirms this view. Without work directed at integrating the dreams—at breaking down the dissociations that are present both in the dreaming and the reporting—the subjects do not learn anything about themselves. Just as one must work hard in the real world to transform a creative inspiration into a poem, a painting, or a piece of music or literature, so one must work hard at making individual sense of one’s dreams if they are to be more than fleeting, uninformative glimpses of what is within.”
It is with a similar commitment that I have offered my own set of studies regarding the nature and dynamics of dreams – as well as the broader functions served by sleep. Given the role of Louis Breger as my mentor (and later a teaching colleague at my graduate school), it is probably not surprising that for many years I have been interested in the way that reality not only influences our dream, but also our dreams, in turn, can influence reality.
Before leaving this matter of reality influencing dreams, I wish to offer a different perspective that concerns a more mundane (yet vital) function we serve in anticipating what will happen in our life (waking and sleeping).
From Reality to Dreams II: Crossing the Bridge via Anticipation
As sentient beings, we are blessed (and cursed) with the capacity to anticipate what is about to happen and then adjust our thoughts, feelings and actions in response to this anticipation (Bergquist, 2026) We live in the very near future (homo futurus). This means that we have the capacity to anticipate that which can actually do us harm and that which we only imagine will do us harm (Sapolsky’s imagined lions). Our dreams provide a venue in which our anticipations can be dramatically visualized, and in which alternative responses to what is anticipated can be considered.
From Conscious Life to Dreams
We find that the capacity of humans to anticipate what is about to occur has evolved and been institutionalized in many contemporary enterprises, such as the insurance business and the “futures” market found at the stock market. In the case of insurance companies, concern must be directed not only to the anticipation of those working inside the company, but also the anticipation of the customers that these companies serve. Much as in the case of most modern organizations, those working in an insurance company will be highly motivated to work hard and will manifest high morale if they anticipate being treated well by others in the organization. Those leading the modern insurance company must also anticipate the level of positive and negative anticipation of their customers regarding their personal and collective future.
I mention this two-way focus of insurance companies because the committee of sleep that many of us convene every night often operates like a metaphoric insurance company (Barrett, 2001). Dreams represent both our conscious, real-life concerns about what we personally anticipate, and our concerns about the anticipations of people whom we care about and serve during our waking hours. For instance, many people report dreams that accurately predict something that soon occurs in their life—such as the death of a relative or their good luck in winning a lottery. Our dreams are filled with these anticipations.
