False Remembrance in Dreams

. . . I was walking down a street in my dream. I was thinking to myself, “I remember this neighborhood. I haven’t been here since my childhood.” Strong feelings of fond nostalgia accompanied the scene. I even knew what the next house on the block would look like before I reached it. When I woke up, I immediately realized that I have never been in such a neighborhood in my entire life - yet the dream memory of it had been convincing.

It turns out that this experience of seemingly authentic memories in dreams - (only to discover that no true waking correlation exists) - is not uncommon. Shortly after my dream, I stumbled upon an internet posting which questioned exactly the same perplexing phenomenon under the heading “Dream Memory.” Before delving further into this topic, I want to explain my preference for “false remembrance” rather than “dream memory.”

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Whereas the expression “dream memory” would initially appear to be the most obvious and appropriate title for this subject, it is likely to be misleading. It may easily be misinterpreted as referring to “dream recall.” For instance, your dream memory (i.e. your ability to remember your dreams) may be better than mine. This is not what we mean in this discussion.

Another similar usage is “false memory.” Again, this begs to be rejected because it has another established meaning in common parlance. It is used by psychiatrists and lawyers when questioning the validity of “recovered repressed memories” from alleged childhood abuse. Thus we have another term for the tinder.

With the two most common expressions essentially found falling short, I was initially at a loss for an acceptable alternative. As luck would have it, I was perusing the Lucidity Institute’s website and came across The Study of Dreams by Frederik van Eeden. This is the renowned document in which the expression “Lucid Dreaming” was first coined for our “conscious recognition that we are asleep and dreaming.” To my surprise - (in the very same document) - Frederik van Eeden also makes reference to “False Remembrance” in dreams! I truly admire his insightful choice of the word “remembrance.” Although it is a noun, it has enough stretch to be interpreted a bit like a verb - implying the process of remembering as well as that which is remembered.

Having established (for me) that “false remembrance” is the best distinctive expression for the phenomenon under consideration, we now face the task of explaining it.

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Trustworthy waking memory - (playing its role in organizing our human experience) - is critical to our survival. Faulty waking memory would certainly be detrimental to our survival. In dreams, however, faulty memory has no consequence to survival at all. What is the worst case scenario? You wake up safely in bed.

Thus it is clearly not important whether our memories in dreams are true or not. In some inexplicable way, it appears that they are “instantly conceived” to maintain the dream and its story.

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It is irresistible for me to speculate on how the dreaming mind can generate memories on the fly. As our dreams conjure up their nightly collage with images and experiences gathered from our sensory lifetime (“day residue” from a lifetime of days), I theorize that their original “true remembrance” is stirred. In their blend, the emergent memories (though in a uniquely new dreamed circumstance) are accurately perceived as having a prior waking reference and are thus authentically “remembered.”

Let me clarify this with an example: One of the characters in one of my dreams was “my best friend” throughout the dream story. Upon waking up - with his image still clearly in my mind - I was intrigued to admit that the character with whom I had just interacted was not my best friend at all, and in fact looked nothing like him. It is my theory that the person in my dream was a composite of waking corporeal acquaintances, and my “true memory of each blended together” caused the genuine feeling of an intimate bond.

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Someone once-upon-a-time became genuinely angry with me for using the term “false remembrance.” He protested that using the word “false” essentially closed the door in the face of any other explanations. I understood his concern and ignored his reaction. There are of course some theories on how “false remembrances” may actually in fact be true. I’ll give just one of them here:

(Theory) Just as the waking world has its own history and memories, the same is true for the dreaming world. It has its own history and memories. At the beginning of this post, I related a dream of a remembered neighborhood which doesn’t exist in waking reality. Perhaps I had dreamed of this neighborhood before. Thus the memory of it in my dream could have been an “authentic remembrance” of a previous dream.” (Personally, I strongly suspect that dream memories are “spontaneously generated,” but I don’t ask that you agree with me).

For a video exposition on this subject, I refer you to my Lucid Dream Discourse #8 on YouTube and iTunes (free).

I welcome and appreciate any response from any perspective. Don’t be offended if I don’t respond. I’m too old for disputes. /Stephen Berlin