On the one hand, Sigmund Freud believed that positive anticipations, which he called wish-fulfillment, play a foundational role in dreams. On the other hand, the imaginary lions identified by Robert Sapolsky exemplify the negative anticipations that are common in our life and dreams. We are attacked in our dreams by monsters, thieves, or witches. A large wave comes crashing through our home. Or, in our dreams, we are the “white knight” who saves our loved ones from harm. Or we are the powerless person who furtively watches our loved one being carried off by an evil figure. Our dreams truly operate as metaphoric insurance companies as we portray positive and negative anticipations coming to pass. And as we portray ways in which we could confront these anticipations. Or how we feel about the impact that the anticipated future has on our loved ones as well as ourselves.
Specifically, we carry our anticipations with us as we fall asleep. Our early dreams at night often focus on these anticipations (concerns). Freud (1990/2010) considered this “day residue” to be extensively present in our dreams. However, this residue is to be ignored, for it serves as unimportant “noise” in the system (to use a term from communication theory) or as the “cover” for some underlying and unacceptable thought or feeling. However, other dream interpreters invite us to pay close attention to this day residue, filled with anticipatory hopes and fears. This residue provides us with important insights regarding the agenda for our transactional dreaming.
We attempt to solve problems in our dreams that arise from what we anticipate. Alternatively, our dreams yield scenes filled with Awe (Keltner, 2024) or Flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) because we anticipate that there will soon be an occasion in our real life for this kind of experience. Or we sadly anticipate that the opportunity for Awe or Flow will be passing us by, given that we must attend to other priorities or lack the money, strength or ability to avail ourselves of this experience.
Dreams are produced that lead us into consideration of transformations that we anticipate will occur, or at least hope will occur in our life. In our transformational dream, we “test-drive” the anticipated “new self” in our dream to see how it feels and how other people will react to this self. Our dream is concerned with the journey we are about to take in real-life as we confront anticipated barriers and enemies; the destination of this journey is often clouded in mystery or is only revealed once we are underway. Much as in the case of our real-life journey, we are not quite sure why we are beginning the journey and are not always confident that we have reached or ever could reach the desired endpoint. We anticipate confusion, misdirection, and discouragement when we are awake. These feelings are openly manifest in the misfortunes we encounter while on our journey. Hopefully, there is a portrayal of ultimate triumph at the end of our dream-generated journey.
From Unconscious Life to Dreams
Freud’s major interest in dreams comes from their own impenetrable barrier. Freud suggested that dreams are created primarily to deal with unconscious life of the dreamer. And for Freud, dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.
If we live into our near future through our anticipations regarding what is about to happen, then we might inquire into the determinants of this anticipation. The state of our body might determine, or at least influence, what we anticipate. We “feel in our guts” that something good is about to happen, or something bad resides just around the corner. Peter Sterling (2020) writes about our brain being in the business of anticipating what is about to happen in our body as it reacts to the outside world. We adjust our physiological baseline in response to this biological anticipation. He calls this Allostasis. It is certainly possible that what we psychologically anticipate from moment to moment is determined primarily by this allostatic process, or by the somatic template that sums up our physiological state at each moment. As Michael Polanyi (1969) has proposed, we are always attending from our body to whatever we anticipate, thus opening the door for the physiological determination of our anticipations.
It is also likely that what we anticipate is based on our “realistic” assessment of what is occurring out there in the world. We are indeed rational, thoughtful beings who attend to the outside environment and adapt our thoughts, feelings, and behavior to this environment. It is through what we anticipate that this adaptation occurs. I use the term, “Polystasis” to label this process of anticipation and adjustment (Bergquist, 2026).
