Thread: Dream characters created by your mind?

Originally posted by artificer
Sometimes in a dream you meet people. Those people are of course created by your own mind but they appear to completely different characters from you. How is this possible? How can your mind create multiple characters with different personalities all of them ‘living’ inside your head?

I would guess that are minds are constantly interpreting, collecting and gathering data that we are not even aware of. That along side with the personalitieis that you already know and ones your imagination would be able to construct from all this information,
It does not seem that unlikely that it could manifest multiple characers and personalities in your dreams.

Originally posted by artificer
Sometimes in a dream you meet people. Those people are of course created by your own mind but they appear to completely different characters from you. How is this possible? How can your mind create multiple characters with different personalities all of them ‘living’ inside your head?

As a matter of fact even the waking world is a construction inside your mind. That is why we perceive things differently. (Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder) Some people probably think we see with our eyes and hear with the ears. Not so. Your eyes scan about 10 different objects every second. Most information or shapes are almost instantly stored in the subconscious. The more relevant or attentive information is profoundly put together to build a model of the surrounding world. It all happens at the speed of light, or electrical impulses. That same process is used to form a model in your dreams. That is why it is so realistic and plus the addition of no further input from your environment. This model goes on sometimes without functions such as our awareness of the reality of what is really going on. When the awareness is in tact we have a Lucid Dream.

I agree with artificer. What you see in the real world is stored in your subconcious, and when you dream at night, its let out! And not only what you see and hear, but what you think is stored in your subconcious. What you see and what you make of it, to be exact. For instance, I had an online friend with whom we exchanged e-mails with, and with what I made of him, became a character (Brian) who has appeared in my dreams 3 times already, even though in real life I didn't know what he looked like. Multiple characters may also represent sides of yourself, or so I've read. So, if that's correct, that "different" personality would actually be an aspect of yourself. So maybe you would see something of yourself in this character.

Dreaming is supposedly your mind making sense of the world, even if they don't make sense themselves.

I know what you mean. I've got recurring dream characters that have such distinct personalities, and at times really seem intelligent, even though they only exist in my mind. Apparantly, your mind can really branch out and create characters with personalities that are radically different from your own. Personally, i think dream characters are really cool!

just a thought, maybe dream characters are representitives of the concept of collective consiosness. maybe when we are a sleep and our sense arnt so busy, we are more able to pay attention to such a thing, if it possibly exists. that could explain alot of things.

Read Carl Jung's theories on this subject.