I envision a train of ideation moving through the back of our mind. It picks up passengers as it passes through several sectors of our brain, especially our hippocampus (the source of many memories and a vehicle for emotional processing). This might often include passing through our amygdala (the source of many feelings), which resides in our limbic system, alongside the hippocampus. Most importantly, this train is likely to bypass the prefrontal cortex or at least selectively gather content from this regulatory sector of the brain. In traditional psychoanalytic terms, we might say that the “conductor” of this ideational train might be the Id, with the Ego being left at the train station, and the Superego only engaged occasionally as a breaking function.
While this notion of an ideational train is metaphoric, it does relate directly to various studies done by George Klein and his colleagues at New York University. Several of their studies were featured many years ago in Science and the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. These studies involved what was identified as “subliminal perception” and featured in a best-selling book written by Vance Packard (xxx).
I would suggest that Klein’s ideational train doesn’t shut down when we are asleep. In fact, it might be most fully in operation during the nighttime hours when our conscious mind is not in operation. The ideations could appear in our dreams during the night. These ideations would include memories that have been picked up while the train is moving through the memory-filled sectors of our brain. Furthermore, the train is likely to pick up memories that we are savoring when awake. Furthermore, the train could be picking up passengers from our dreams.
This being the case, there could be a rich interweaving of memories and dreams during both our daytime and nighttime.
Shift in Daytime and Dream Content
There is a fair amount of evidence suggesting that many of us tend to retreat at least a bit when we grow older. The Jungians would suggest that we become more introverted as we grow older. This certainly has been the case for me.
Related to this shift is a potential change in the content of our daytime life and our dreams. Do we leave behind our extraverted, externally oriented activities when we are awake, but still operate in an extraverted manner in our dreams? I have found this to be so in my own life and in the life of other people in my life who are also in the senior years of their life.
I wish to bring in a specific personality theory as a way to make sense of what is occurring. This theory is called the Enneagram (Palmer, 1991). It is only of the oldest and most respected ways in which to describe different personality types.
During most of my adult life, the Enneagram Seven best describes the way in which I have operated in my waking life. As an Enneagram Seven, I have spent my life dreaming of new ventures and often enacting them. I have been the optimist who sells ideas to other people and creates new programs. While at my core, I am Introverted and enjoy spending time alone (and creating new ideas in isolation (this being one of my faults), I have spent most of my life operating in an extraverted manner, bringing to life my dreams.
