Continuing the posts on theories of dreams….This is just the summary (quite dense and difficult to understand)… As far as I can tell, the full article is not available on the Web…
(In my view, the world is teetering on the edge of destruction… Information might save us… Why are people still trying to make money by making you pay for so much for research… This information should all be in the public domain… )
RICHARD COUTTS (2008)
Psychological Reports: Volume 102, Issue , pp. 561-574.
DREAMS AS MODIFIERS AND TESTS OF MENTAL SCHEMAS: AN EMOTIONAL SELECTION HYPOTHESIS
Summary
A process is proposed that helps a person adapt to a social environment. During sleep, this process executes a set of dreams with social content that schemas tentatively incorporate by self-modifying. Due to vast interconnectivity that exists amongst social schemas, such modifications may introduce accidental, maladaptive conflicts. Consequently, a second set of dreams is executed in the form of test scenarios in order to evaluate the schema modifications effected by the first set of dreams. The process would monitor emotions generated during these latter dream tests. If prior, tentative modifications alleviate anxiety, frustration, sadness, or in other ways appear emotionally adaptive, they would be selected for retention. Those modifications that compare negatively to existing, unchanged schemas would be abandoned or further modified and tested. The correspondences of these hypotheses to the sleep cycle, previous dream studies, and functional neurological processes are discussed.
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