[FRIAM] Unpleasant dreams

Tue Jun 4 12:03:03 EDT 2024

<anecdotal report>

    my dream life has been pretty elaborate from time to time and most
    of it is not particularly unpleasant, but when I have had unpleasant
    dreams they roughly fall into two categories:   1) worrying the
    future; 2) worrying the past.

    Mine are biased toward "frustration" over "fear".  I'm rarely being
    chased or at risk of falling off a cliff, but more likely trying to
    find something or solve a problem or manipulate a complex set of
    objects which are uncooperative.

    Reports from my friends and acquaintances tend to revolve around
    negative dreams and it feels as if that are the ones they find
    worthy of reporting or perhaps of those more likely to remember?

</anecdote>

my casual interest in the research around dreaming has lead me to 
believe that the two main functions of (human) dreams are: A) sort 
through and untangle (groom?) ambiguities that build up in our waking 
lives; B) practice a wide range of skills and ideations in a "safe" 
context.   Like a great deal of scientific studies, it is the unexpected 
and extravagant which bubbles up into the popular science press and then 
goes through another distillation as it gets rendered into doom-scroll 
newsfeed lists...

Revonsuo's hypothesis is a specific example of B)?

It is worth noting that virtually all animals suffer badly if they are 
deprived of sleep and in most? cases if they are deprived of 
"dreaming"?  Seems pretty deep in the function of neurobiology maybe 
especially vertebrate and definitely mammalian?   Seems like Cetaceans 
(some? all?) do alternative lateral sleep/dreaming?

Not sure about Jellyfish... they seem to be dreaming all the time?

On 6/3/24 11:44 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
>
> I do not find Paul's book completely convincing. Randolph M. Nesse's 
> book "Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of 
> Evolutionary Psychiatry" shows much more clearly that bad feelings 
> prevent us from doing things which are bad for us. They are threat 
> avoidance programs from our genes.
>
>
> His remark about dreams are interesting nevertheless. He mentions for 
> instance this paper from Antti Revonsuo, "The reinterpretation of 
> dreams: An evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming" in 
> Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23(6) (2000).  877–901; 904–1018; 
> 1083–1121.
>
> http://behavioralhealth2000.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/The-reinterpretation-of-dreams-An-evolutionary-hypothesis-of-the-function-of-dreaming.pdf
>
>
> Revonsuo argues one function of dreams may be to simulate threatening 
> events. They may help to improve threat prevention by predicting 
> dangerous situations and preparing us for unkown dangers. Some fears 
> seem to be hardcoded but this method has limits. For example we are 
> much more afraid of spiders and snakes than of cars and fast food 
> which are more dangerous to us in the modern world
>
> https://nautil.us/how-evolution-designed-your-fear-236858/
>
>
> -J.
>
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: glen <gepropella at gmail.com>
> Date: 6/3/24 11:04 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unpleasant dreams
>
> I had a conversation with a psychiatrist friend of mine wherein she 
> assumed the dichotomy between "good feelings" and "bad feelings" (e.g. 
> an angry or relieved reaction to some thing like the Trump verdict). 
> Through about an hour of conversation, I'd tried to convince her that 
> dichotomy is false. Bad things are good and good things are bad. The 
> valence we assign is post-hoc. I failed, of course. But...
>
> I feel the same way about phobias. It's a bit trite to suggest that we 
> like exploring our fears in a safe environment like at a movie theater 
> with a friend or two. But it's testament to the milieu that monsters 
> vs treasures is a false dichotomy. And it goes beyond some 
> complementarity like banking present pain for future pleasure. It's 
> truly a dual. The highs *are* the lows and vice versa. If there is 
> such a thing as free will, your assignment of valence might be the 
> only freedom you have.
>
> I don't know if Bloom explores this aspect. But the body of work 
> spawned from Friston and the minimization of surprisal targets it 
> directly. It's reasonable to believe that *agency* is what provides 
> the common substructure for an explanatory model of the ascription of 
> valence to an experience. The hypothetical to explore is whether those 
> experiences that promote agency are more often ascribed as (or felt 
> like) "good" ones, whether painful, pleasurable, fearful, triumphant, 
> or whatever the token ascribed.
>
> On 6/3/24 13:15, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > Did you notice that some of the most successful movies from 
> Spielberg are about our deepest fears? Jurassic Park is about monsters 
> from the past. Jaws is about monsters which lurk in the deep blue sea. 
> Indiana Jones is about monsters (and treasures) hiding in dark tombs.
> >
> >
> > Paul Boom remarks in his book "The Sweet Spot" that psychologists 
> have long known that unpleasant dreams are more frequent than pleasant 
> ones. Why is that so? Do unpleasant dreams prepare us for possible 
> dangers or are we just relieved that the are over if they end?
> >
> > 
> https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-sweet-spot-paul-bloom?variant=40262533840930
>
>
> -- 
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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