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Dreaming and its Discontents: U.S. Cultural Models in the Theater of Dreams

2013; Wiley; Volume: 41; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/etho.12030

1548-1352

Jeannette Marie Mageo,

Memory and Neural Mechanisms

Abstract Drawing together research in cognitive anthropology and psychology, this article argues that REM dreamers enlist metaphors associated with a cultural model in waking life to stage scenes that represent their recent and past problems with the model—be these ones of mastery or with the adequacy of the model for addressing life circumstances. These scenes provide a space where dreamers discover how and why a model is working badly and where they practice and experiment in order to move on to a new stage—both by better mastering models and by better adapting them. Dreamers’ difficulty with one model often involves problems with others. Dreams disclose these linkages. I develop this argument through ethnographic, life history, and dream data collected from U.S. undergraduates at a northwestern university. The models described herein, then, are regional but are also common in U.S. mainstream, middle‐class culture more broadly, particularly among young people.