Question
I have very vivid dreams often, but my boyfriend says he doesn't dream. Are
there people who don't dream or has he no memory of them?
Answer
Glad to hear you are having vivid dreams, and I hope you are writing them
down!
It is common in our society for people to not recall their dreams. Dream
science tells us we have dream about every 90 minutes of sleep, more towards
the end of the sleep period, for about 20 minutes per dream. This makes about
six dreams per night that we are capable of recalling if we were to be
awakened and asked. But there are other factors.
The main one seems to be what we do immediately after waking up. If our
thoughts are trained to immediately start thinking about the future the
dream can forever remain lost. Thinking such thoughts as planning the day,
what to wear, who we have to contact, what meetings we are going to, what's
for breakfast, all lead to loss of dream recall. For some this is a lifetime habit so strong they will
swear they never have had a dream, and telling them differently can be
irritating and humiliating to the non-recaller. But if the person is
interested in *learning* to recall dreams, there are many techniques and they
will work over time with most people. See the suggestions in this column.
2/20/98
Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The
Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet
Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for
the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.
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