When someone speaks
about careers, for instance, it may happen that some people allude to any
professional events of theirs and, then, are caught by dim feelings or intense
flashes of euphoria, anguish, regrets… If their attention keeps caring to the
talk, the feelings won’t be noticed. That’s why some psychological processes
(emotion and assessments) may
stay under-exposed, preconscious.
These are open to reappear in dreams (see
the pilot study).
That
means that a dream appears to us as a performance of a recorded “preconscious”
psychological process of the real-life. We’ll show here that this type of
re-presentation can be seen as scientific although it doesn’t emanate from our
conscious mind.
A possible
epistemological reference.
This next
classification is proposed in order to highlight how scientific dreams are.
We’ll consider 2 axes: the axe of the scientific perspectives and the one of
the scientific potentials.
Concerning this
axe, we’ll consider 3 perspectives: the scientific perception, the scientific
phenomenology and the cosmological science.
First
perspective: the scientific
perception. This perspective only deals with representations of
perceptible things. Here, the questions are “how is it – or was it – according
to human eyes?”
This scientific
process supposes:
·
to perceive perceptible things,
·
to differentiate the things which are
perceived,
·
to create a relationship between perceived
elements and mental elements (which typically
are words),
·
to present a hierarchical structure if any
(typically by elaborating a system for measurement).
Indeed,
dreamt-representations are concerned with this perspective (see how).
Second
perspective: the
scientific phenomenology. This perspective deals with the knowledge of
the relationships between perceptible causes and perceptible effects. The
scientific phenomenology is supposed to answer the question: “what will happen”
and a process is supposed to be truly known if no experimentations contradict
the idea one has concerning its results. That’s why it is the field of
experimentations. Dreamt-representations don’t enter this perspective (see why).
Third
perspective: the
cosmological science. This perspective tries to answer the question:
“why is it like that?” Here the purpose is to propose a theory which is:
·
coherent, that means logical and
consistent with the knowledge of the perceptible things and the knowledge of
the processes,
·
efficient, that means that the theory
should minimise the number of postulates and maximise the field of its
explanations.
As this approach
finds energise in the question “why?” then it should prevent us from any
original reasons. (Indeed, each original reason would prompt an answer to the
question: “what has generated this so-called original reason?”). So,
cosmological science should be an endless mental run behind reasons. That means
that it can’t help being more and more speculative unless the running is
stopped thanks to postulated original causes.
One can see such
original causes in God, in the Newton’s force (in classical mechanics), in the
Einstein’s fields, in the physiologist’s functionality. All of them are
postulated, original and energizing causes. All of them have not still been
perceived and their “existences” are supposed due to perceptible effects they
“explain”. One can so find in the psychoanalytic unconscious such a postulated
original and energizing cause needed for the psychological theories.
Parallel
to these 3 perspectives,
one can approach the question of scientific levels from the scientific
potential point of view.
Here,
the idea is to distinguish different extents in the scientific investigating
abilities. For instance, humans can elaborate representations of perceived
things although they are no more in visibility (concretely before one opens his
eyes he can imagine what he is going to see). This potential is more powerful
than the one which only allows to get representations of what is presently
visible. Indeed, it is possible to distinguish levels in the representing
potentials and we propose to distinguish a particular gap in the scientific
potentials depending on whether imaginative representations are only recalls of
what was or if they can be innovative combinations of previous observations.
The
scientific scan level deals with
observations and with their “as it is” representations. It is not so easy as it
is a fight against:
·
blindness (the purpose is to increase the
field of the perceived things),
·
confusion (the purpose is to sharpen the
observation),
·
prejudice (the purpose is to settle
representation on what actually is),
·
unawareness (the purpose is to bring
non-noticed perception to a noticed level).
The
scientific compiling level deals with
alterations. Here, representations of unperceived things or acts are created
thanks to the ability to combine parts of different scanned representations.
This imagined creation can be driven in an anarchic, logical or analogical way.
The results are conjectures.
This
potential is double-edged. In a way, it is a very fertile means for
investigations as conjectures point out on what could really be. That guides
the look. In the other way, this potential can be harmful when conjectures
become realities in one’s mind. When one forgets that a conjecture is only a
conjecture then he may take imperceptible things as real ones.
Dreams as results of a scientific process.
Dreams enter the
perspective of the scientific perception.
Our pilot study suggests that a dream is
an accurate reproduction of a psychological process which has been experienced
the day before. Dreams reoccur a certain kind of feelings and assessments – the
“preconscious” ones – which have been experienced
in a single moment of the near-past real-life.
In
other words, a dream seems to be a performance of a real-life perceived – but
not noticed – psychological process which has been recorded. That means that
there had been perception, differentiation and display; in one word:
description.
So,
one who says that a mental representation is a scientific one as soon as it
describes what actually is, this one, then, has to say that dreams are
scientific representations concerning the psychological field.
Through
dreams “psychological-things” are differentiated and converted into
“dreamt-things” and not into words. So, this kind of representation is not a
conceptual one and that’s why one may hesitate to see a scientific investigation
in the elaboration of dreams. There is another reason for that: dreams don’t
reach the scientific compiling level.
Of
course, an important question is to be sure that a dream is an exact description
of what it was. Let’s just begin to remember that the question of the
exactitude of any representations is a classic epistemological problem which
exists in all of the sciences and which is still under discussions.
According
to our point of view, science is psycho-centred. That means that any living being’s
representation depends on his sense and on his intellect. We could imagine
intelligent aliens who could see and understand the world in a so different way
than humans’ that it would be impossible for us to experience their
representations and, so, their world although we would live in the same world.
So, according to this epistemological point of view, a scientific
representation is an adequate transformation of the so-called Objective
Reality. In this perspective, a dreamt representation is a special case as it
is an exact reproduction – and not only an “adequate transformation” – of the
nature of the represented objects (which are feelings). So, in a way, we could
say that a dreamt-representation is one of the most objective representations!
Concerning accuracy,
the question is: “how deep and how exact is the relationship between the
real-life psychological process and its dreamt-representation?” As this
question emanates from our conscious mind, we expect conscious minded
arguments. A way to deal with this question is to compare any real-life
psychological processes with their dreamt-representations thanks to the
introspective method. Unfortunately, there is a double source of inaccuracy in
this method. There are possible biases due to the retrospective introspection –
the analyst has to remember, in sincerity, a psychological process he had
experienced – and there are biases in the conceptual description of the dream
(there might be inaccuracies and omissions when one writes his dream). That’s
why it is difficult to evaluate the depth of accuracy thanks to this method.
Nevertheless, we believe that future will give us the technical means to
clarify this question and we consider, thanks to our introspective
observations, that the accuracy could be amazing.
Dreams enter neither the perspective of the scientific
phenomenology, neither the cosmological science’s one.
The
dream of the aggressive giant shows that
dreams may deal with cause-to-effect relationships (“if I shot the giant’s
genitals, then he would become my slave”). But these dreamt-relationships only
reproduce real-life processes in which the question “what will happen?” was
asked or answered. Dreams reproduce; they don’t manage any knowledge about
cause-to-effect relationships. That’s why dreamt-representations don’t enter
the scientific phenomenology and, consequently, the cosmological science.
Dreams enter the scientific scan
level but don’t enter the compiling
level.
Dreams
might be seen as “as it is” reproductions of real-life psychological processes.
In that way, they enter the scientific scan level. Now, the question is: do
they also enter the compiling level? Obviously, typical dreams don’t. They only
are strict performances of recorded things. But, what’s about the dreams in
which the dreamer thinks he is dreaming and thinks he is managing his dream?
In
the example we give, we show that
the dreamt-feeling of being lucid is a reproduction of the real-life feeling of
conducting an understanding process. In that way, lucid dreams don’t enter the
scientific compiling level.
So,
dreams might be understood – by our conscious mind – as results of a scientific
perception process. This scientific process only concerns passive ways for
representations. So, it looks slashed because the ability for questioning or
answering questions is missing. But why shouldn’t we be pragmatic? After all,
dreams seem to be “good” reproductions of something which has happened, so, why
won’t we try to see how we can use this phenomenon?
Dreams as a
scientific pivot for studies in the field of introspective psychology.
Conscious
representations are scientific if they deal with reliable observations. Indeed,
it could be that dreams were reliable observations for introspective
psychology. We have mentioned possible biases due to the conscious taken into
account. But, according to us, a scientific ideal is not the “0-biase” – as it
is impossible to make sure of that – but the biases decreasing policy. This is
obviously possible – thanks to practice – in our approach of dreams and, so, we
can use them as displays of under-exposed psychological processes.
Dreams
also appear as displays of measurement devices. (There is a hierarchical
meaning in going at the hairdresser or at the doctor’s, in aiming the head or genitals). A pragmatic would say
that the important thing is in the capacity to highlight hierarchical
differences. According to him, it is thanks to the existence of scales that the
notion of weight appeared and has been used. The method in which things are
defined before we know how to measure them may lead to dead ends. On the
contrary, the method which consists in discovering measurement devices and then
in trying to understand the involved qualities (the “weight” in our example) is
much more fertile. So, considering that the elaboration of dreams includes
measurement processes, the introspective psychology will advance by answering
the question: “what is measured through dreams?”
A possible other important contribution of
dreams to introspective psychology may concern definition
of concepts. A main difficulty in introspective psychology is to be sure
that a concept – a word – has the same signification – recalls the same thing –
for every one. According to us, some psychological-things are differentiated
and converted into dreamt-things thanks to constant conversions. For example, a
dreamt-story can run outside or inside a room, a house, an underground passage…
Translations of dreams have made us understand that outside dreamt-stories are
linked to a kind of psychological processes, and inside dreamt-stories are
linked to another kind of psychological processes. So, when we become familiar
with dreams and with their translations, we can recognise those 2 different and
complementary kinds of psychological processes and then, it becomes possible to
define concepts such as: “introversion is the psychological process which is
converted into an inside dreamt-story”, “extroversion is the psychological
process which is converted into an outside dreamt-story”. (See Toward a dreamt-sourced psychology?)