How Dreams And Memory May Be Related

I present a theory of dreams and long term memory structure that proposes that both entities are closely related. It is based on a variation of Freud's dream theory: (1) I re-label Freud's "Unconscious" the “Long Term Memory Structure” (LTMS), (2) I propose that dreams are ever present excitational responses to perturbations of perceptions and thought, during waking life as well as sleep, which only become conscious when the executive function of waking life ceases, and (3) I reinterpret Freud’s “Dream Work” as describing the pre-dream Storage Transformation of perceptions and thought into the LTMS. I make one further conjecture: Memories are stored in the LTMS according to what is already in the LTMS. The observables of Freud's theory remain the same. The new theory is also consistent with recent experimental findings and suggests a partial basis for personality: the selection process of the Storage Transformation. “... each of us remembers and forgets in a pattern whose labyrinthing windings are an identification mark no less distinctive than a fingerprint” (American Pastoral, Philip Roth)