The Dream as Text, The Dream as Narrative

1

Patricia Kilroe


1. Introduction
Dreams are intriguing phenomena of the mind. There seem to be certain shared
processes, for example, that are important to both dreaming and language. Some of
these have been well-explored in the century since Freud published The Interpretation
of Dreams. In my own work work (Kilroe 1997, 1998, 1999a) I have explored the role
of metaphor, metonymy, and punning in the formation of dream imagery.
Now I would like to turn my attention to consideration of the question, Is the
dream a text? And following that, a narrower question, Can the dream be properly
thought of as a narrative? Although it has been assumed in past decades that text and
narrative are terms appropriately applied to dreams, I would like look closely at these
assumptions. I am going to propose that all dreams are texts, although this proposal
rests on a particular use of the term dream, which is to be clarified below. I also propose
that some but not necessarily all dream texts are narratives. I am interested here in the
form of dreams, in their narrativity, by way of inquiring into the cognitive aspects of
narrative structure and its relation to language. I am also interested in the role of
language in the generation of dreams. I am not here attempting to formulate an
interpretative system for dreams, although I believe an encounter with potential
meaning is unavoidable, accepting as I do that the dream is a metaphor in motion
(Ullman 1969), and that in narrative the functional units are already units of content: It
is what a statement means which constitutes it as a functional unit (Barthes
1994:105).

2. Text
To begin with, the term text has been understood broadly in recent decades, and
it is this broad understanding which permits the notion of text to be extended to dreams.
We may say that texts can be any physical structure at all made to embody ideas in the
semiotic sense, (Deely 1990:64-5) and that text is the primary element (basic unit) of
culture, generated by the systems of cultural codes (Uspenskij et al. 1973:6). Hence the
application of text semiotics to a broad range of cultural phenomena. Danesi (1999:30)
for example, includes routine conversations, along with musical compositions, stage
plays, dance styles, and ceremonies, as examples of products of our text-making
capacity.


1
Thanks go to the three anonymous reviewers of this article for their numerous helpful
comments, which among other things prompted me to rethink the concepts of text and
narrative central to this paper. Whatever errors and obscurities remain are of course due to no
ones shortcomings but my own.
Although the claim has been made that the concept of text in its broadest sense
refers to messages of any code (Nth 1990:331), it will be critical to my argument to
recognize that the terms message and text are not synonymous. A message refers to
what one wishes to communicate; a text refers to how the message is constructed
(Danesi 1999:30). Whether or not a text must convey a message is a question of
relevance to the study of dreams. For purposes of the present discussion I will define a
text by formal rather than semantic criteria. A text must have definable parameters; it
must be separable from other phenomena of experience by spatiotemporal boundaries.
Thus a text is a formal unit. It also has coherence, the determination of which is made
by the experiencer of the text; it is content expressed through a formal code which
makes use of cohesive links to create an impression of unity.
A text, then, is a form that must have content, but that content does not
necessarily have a message. We could say, for example, that Lewis Carrolls
Jabberwocky is a text because as a poem it is a formally cohesive unit, but that its
content is semantically empty and hence conveys no message. (If there is a message, it
is arrived at only when an interpreter views the poem as a signifier in a broader cultural
context.) Conversely, a specific message such as children are lovable could be
formalized through a variety of codes, e.g., a photo exhibit in a museum, a book without
illustrations, or a televised public service announcement. Each different product of
encoding this message would have to be considered a separate text despite the identity
of the message of their content. In general, however, a text without a message seems a
rather pointless exercise. Communicators that they are, people seem to pay more
attention to meaning than to form. Because a form whose content is semantically empty
is unlikely to hold our interest, the great majority of texts will contain a message of
some sort. So I will take form as the primary marker in identifying a text, but
meaningthe messageas the overwhelmingly likely motive for the creation of a text.
The etymology of the word text, something woven (from the past participle of
the Latin verb texere, to weave), refers to a characteristic of textuality that might be
defined as a coherent whole (Nth 1990:332). For Danesi (1999:6), A text is,
literally, a weaving together of the elements taken from a specific code in order to
communicate something. For example, When someone says something to someone or
writes a letter, he or she is engaged in making a verbal text; when someone selects
clothing items to dress for an occasion, he or she is making a bodily text... The notion
of a woven, that is, coherent, product is pivotal in the consideration of dreams as texts.
Is the dream a text? My response is a qualified yes which is dependent upon a
particular use of the term dream. Texts have boundaries; as products separated from the
stream of continuous experience, they allow us to focus on them extracted from other
phenomena. By my use of the term dream I mean the dream once we have experienced
it. To say I had a dream is to acknowledge an isolatable experience with temporal
boundaries that begins where we can recall it beginning, and it ends where we can recall
it ending. Through criteria of form we recognize a dream as a subjective text, and if the
formal properties of texts are their defining factor, then the question of whether or not
the dream conveys a message can be treated separately. As a discrete unit of form, the
experienced dream coheres and so can be considered a text.
Semantically, the dream may or may not seem to cohere, although a lack of
semantic coherence may be a result of not knowing how to read the dream text, to
paraphrase Jung (1974:97). It seems reasonable to suppose that if dreams are indeed
texts as I am asserting, then they generally have a message-based content; this follows
from the observation that meaningless texts would rarely attract our interest, and clearly
many people are intensely interested in the presumed meaning of their own dream-texts.
But of course this view rests on my argument that experienced dreams are texts.
Moreover, I do not limit the term message to the sense of lesson, but rather accept the
use of message for any event sequence that can broadly be said to constitute the plot of
the dream.
The dream while it is being dreamed is experience, not text. Our memory of that
experience, whether we report is or not, is the text of the dream. So there is something
between the initial experience of the dream and the dream report, just as there is
something between waking experience and our report of that experience. The report in
both cases is a text; the experience itself is not. The experience becomes a text once it is
a completed product; we recognize it as a cohesive phenomenon bounded in space and
time, having form as well as content. So the dream becomes a text the moment the
initial experience of it has ended, just as a waking experience can become a text as soon
as we are able to reflect on it as something that happened to us.
The more difficult question concerns the relation of the experienced dream to the
dream report, and which of them is the appropriate object of inquiry into dream
textuality and narrativity. That the dream report is a text seems uncontroversial. The
report takes form through a medium, whether visual (pictorial), or verbal (spoken or
written). It has a beginning, middle, and end formally speaking, it has spatiotemporal
boundaries. It also has cohesive links: in a verbal report we find, for example, the use of
anaphoric pronouns (we, her...), adverbials (there, suddenly...), and other common
devices of textuality. There are often near-formulaic statements, e.g., for beginnings, It
starts out with..., endings, ...And thats all I can remember and even midstream
transitions, Then, suddenly, the scene shifted.
Obviously, when we work with dreams, we can only work with the report of a
dream, which is an objective product. But we are doing the same when we report a
waking experience. In order to share any experience, the experiencer must encode it in a
representational system such as language, which is both enabling and limiting in its
capacity for full and accurate representation. But we dont discount the value of a report
because it isnt identical to the experience; rather, we accept reports of waking
experience as simply the best means available for representing and relating them. We
can think of dream reports in the same way. If a report of waking experience can be
considered a workable representation of that experience, then the dream report can
analogously be considered a workable representation of the dreamers subjective
experience of the dream. The reportand from here on I will be considering only
verbal (spoken or written) dream reportsis the best means we have for representing
our dream experience in a way that allows it to be anchored in time and communicated
to others. We can hardly produce a dream report, moreover, if the experienced dream is
not already a unit of text.
It is of interest to note here Jungs apparent lack of concern about the gap
between the experienced dream text and the dream report. In his argument against
Freuds manifest dream being a facade for the latent dream, Jung seems to presuppose
the adequacy of the dream report as a valid object of textual inquiry:
The manifest dream-picture is the dream itself and contains the whole
meaning of the dream... What Freud calls the dream-facade is the dreams
obscurity, and this is really only a projection of our own lack of understanding.
We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. We
would do better to say that we are dealing with something like a text that is
unintelligible not because it has a facadea text has no facadebut simply
because we cannot read it. We do not have to get behind such a text, but must
first learn to read it. (Jung 1974:97)
Support for the adequacy of reports also comes from laboratory evidence.
Kramer (1993:157-8), for example, provides a summary of work that justifies reliance
on dream reports as sufficiently faithful representations of the dream:
...experimental laboratory research has provided support, it not confirmation, to
the idea that there is significant similarity between the dream experience and the
dream report (Taub, Kramer, Arand, and Jacobs, 1978). Eye movements and
dream action during REM sleep are relatable (Roffwarg, Dement, Muzio, and
Fisher, 1962). The intensity of the psychological experience during REM sleep
and the dream report of that experience covary (Kramer et al., 1975).
Experiments in which stimuli presented during sleep are incorporated into
dreams suggest a relationship between the dream experience and the dream
report (Kramer, Kinney, and Scharf, 1983).
2

Although no dream report can ever be as satisfying as direct access to the dream
itself, the latter is impossible, and the former is what there is to work with, and that in
abundance. Freuds notion of secondary revision notwithstanding (discussed in the
following section), it may be impossible to know precisely what modifications the
reporting process imposes on the experienced dream. So it is necessary to begin, at
least, by examining dream reports for evidence of textuality and narrativity in the
experienced dream, as indirect an approach as this may be. In addition to positing that
experienced dreams are texts, I consider the verbal dream report to be a particular form
of text which transforms the experienced-dream text into an objective product,
analogously to the way a given story can be told through different media. For the
remainder of this paper, then, I will employ the term dream text in reference to both the
experienced dream and the verbal report of that dream. At the very least, from studying
verbal dream reports we can learn something about textuality and narrativity as mental
processes that provide frameworks for the representation of experience. At best,
however, we may come to better understand the creation and structuring of unconscious
dream texts.
3. Narrativeand narrative elements
I now consider whether dream texts can properly be called narratives. Perhaps
no discussion of narrative can proceed without being prefaced by Roland Barthes well-
known statement:


2
But cf., e.g., Solms (1997), which scrutinizes the relation between dreaming and REM
sleep.
Numberless are the worlds narratives. First of all in a prodigious variety of
genres, themselves distributed among different substances, as if any material
were appropriate for man to entrust his stories to it: narrative can be supported
by articulated speech, oral or written, by image, fixed or moving, by gesture, and
by the organized mixture of all these substances; it is present in myth, legend,
fable, tale, tragedy, comedy, epic, history, pantomime, painting..., stained-glass
window, cinema, comic book, news item, conversation. (Barthes 1994:95)

And let dream-text be added to this list.

Various scholars of narratology have contributed what amounts to a definition of
narrative. I cite only several, selected on the basis of their potential relevance to the
structure of dreams. Toolan (1988:7), for example offers what he terms a first attempt
at a minimalist definition of narrative as a perceived sequence of non-randomly
connected events.
Sarbin (1986:9) defines narrative as a way of organizing episodes, actions, and
accounts of actions; it is an achievement that brings together mundane facts and
fantastic creations; time and place are incorporated. For Prince (1982:1), narrative
may be defined as the representation of real or fictive events and situations in a time
sequence. And among the best-known minimalist statements on narrative is surely that
of Todorov, who defined narrative as the shift from one equilibrium to another . . .,
separated by a period of imbalance (1986:328). This statement merits attention,
having been a source of disagreement with respect to dreams in States (1988:152):
Dreams do not proceed on such a structure, partly because they do not (at least
narratively) begin and end. A dream seems to be a steady disequilibrium, with
no functional or thematic interest in solving or rounding out a problem. The
narrative of the dream is concerned with ramifications of a tension, ... not with
getting me into trouble (or pleasure) and out of it, but with extending the trouble
(or pleasure) to the boundaries of the feeling that produced the dream.

While this statement may be characterize certain dreams, it relies on a narrow concept
of narrative appropriate to the study of literary texts.
3
It also conflicts with Jungs
formulation of the structure of the average dream (for which, see below). But as with


3
Also cf. the discussion in States (1993:75) of how unlike stories dreams are, e.g. that
dream reports do not read like stories; on the contrary, most dream reports preserve the
main structural features of dream narrative, including the in medias res beginning, the
unexplained gaps and shifts in scene, and the inconclusive ending. Here I take States remarks
as a plea against the dream being comparable to a literary text, but presupposing some kind of
narrative form for dreams.
the term text, once again it is a broad conception of narrative which permits us to
include dreams reports as a type of narrative, for as I will illustrate, dream reports do
represent events and situations in a sequence, bringing together both mundane facts and
fantastic creations into a perceived sequence of non-randomly connected events, which
are characterizable as the shift from one equilibrium to another. It is also worth noting
that Barthes (1994:147) saw the dream in contrast to the classical narrative because it is
removed from the logico-temporal order, while the classical narrative is readable
because it contains a sequence of events narrated in an irreversible (logico-temporal)
order; yet through the ages the narrative subverts itself (modernizes itself) by
intensifying in its general structure the work of reversibility.
Before turning to the basic elements of narrative, mention may be made here of
the problem of reliance on dream reports in connection with Freuds secondary revision.
Although Freud was concerned not with the gap between the remembered dream and
the report of that dream but rather with the manifest dream and the supposed latent
thoughts that lay concealed behind it, his notion of secondary revision is nevertheless
relevant to the question of the dreams relation to the dream report. Freud wrote that
...we should disregard the apparent coherence between a dreams constituents as
an unessential illusion, and ... trace back the origin of each of its elements on its
own account.... a psychical force is at work in dreams which creates this
apparent connectedness, which ... submits the material produced by the dream-
work to a secondary revision. (1900:486)
Freud further explained this process as the psychical activity which, though it does not
appear to accompany the construction of dreams invariably, yet, whenever it does so, is
concerned to fuse together elements in a dream which are of a disparate origin into a
whole which shall make sense and be without contradiction. (Freud 1900:496). He
identified secondary revision with waking thought, because according to him it behaves
in the same way, establishing order in perceptual material, setting up relations in it, and
making it conform to our expectations of an intelligible whole (Freud 1900:537).
In short, Freud seemed to recognize that the same text-making, narratizing
capacity that helps us make sense of waking experience is operative in the dream, and
that the dream only achieves an impression of coherence thanks to this capacity. He also
assumed that secondary revision operates simultaneously with the other aspects of
dream formation (condensation, representability, censorship), and not subsequent to
them (Freud 1900:537), which lends support to my claim that text-making, narratizing
processes are at work as the dream is created; they are not simply imposed by the
linguistic constraints of the dream report.
This view would seem to contradict Hartmanns (1996:12) statement that in a
dream what is experienced generally is images..., which leads in turn to the caution
that though we are often forced to work with verbal dream reports we need to keep in
mind that these are only attempts to render the dream experience in a preservable and
reproducible form. This warning notwithstanding, I am proceeding under the
assumption that there is a narratizing principle at work in the dream formation process
which helps to organize perceptual material into a coherent text. I suggest that, while it
may be true that the potential to narratize dreams is as surely wired into the human
brain as is the potential to speak language (Foulkes 1982:276), narratizing is integral to
the formation of many dreams, and narrative form is further enhanced and intensified
when the dream text is rendered as a verbal report.
Narrative elements
Many dream texts would seem to lend themselves to analysis along the lines
developed by narratologists for other sorts of texts. The basic elements of narrative have
been put forward by, for example, Chatman (1978), in reference to Todorovs
formulation of the structuralist view of narrative in the 1960s (cf. Barthes 1994:102).
Chatman divides narratives into two basic parts, story and discourse.
A story (histoire) [is] the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus
what may be called the existents (characters, items of setting); and a discourse
(discours) ... [is] the expression, the means by which the content is
communicated. In simple terms, the story is the what in a narrative that is
depicted, discourse is the how. (Chatman 1978:19)

Narrative discourse, in turn, consists of the narrative form (narrative voice, point of
view, etc.) and the manifestation of the narrative in a specific medium (Chatman
1978:22).
I will keep to Chatmans basic formulation of story and discourse, incorporating
into it Bals (1985) usage of the terms event, actors and to act: An event is the
transition from one state to another state. Actors are agents that perform actions. They
are not necessarily human. To act is defined ... as to cause or to experience an event.
(Bal 1985: 5)
Half a century ago, Jung provided a succinct formulation of the structure of the
average dream, borrowing from the classification of the elements of dramatic plot found
in Aristotles Poetics. My focus here will be on the story component of narrative rather
than the discourse, and what I will explore will be a blend of ideas gleaned from Jung,
Chatman and Bal. Jung identified an opening Exposition phase, consisting of a
statement of place, and a statement about the protagonists, and less frequently a
statement of time; this phase also often indicates the dreamers initial situation. This
first phase is followed by the Development of the plot, in which tension develops and
the situation in the dream becomes complicated. In the third phase there is a
Culmination (peripeteia), in which something decisive occurs or changes completely.
The final phase is the Solution or Result (lysis), which shows the final situation; this
phase is sometimes lacking (Jung 1974:80-1).
The adequacy of Jungs formulation for dream reports and its relation to the
elements of narrative just mentioned will be taken up in the following section. Here it
may be said that Jungs Exposition phase corresponds roughly to a presentation of the
existents of narrative structure (setting, actors) and Jungs remaining phases,
Development, Culmination, and Result, are all aspects of the content of narrative
(events acted by actors). In addition to the term actor for agents that perform actions in
dreams, I will use the term character to encompass, additionally, animate beings who
appear as presences in dreams without acting.
4. Sample dream texts
I now turn to analysis of dream texts. I have chosen data from my dream journal
in order to investigate Jungs proposed narrative structure of dreams.
4
First I will look
at a set of texts in order to see how well the Exposition phase, i.e. the identification of
existents, characterizes the texts in the set. Next I will look at the narrative structure of a
complete dream text.
Orientations: The Exposition phase
Beginning with the Exposition phase, which may consist of the spatial and
possibly temporal setting, the characters involved, and the initial situation, my journal
contains numerous reports which begin by situating the dreamer in a certain location,
although some are quite simple, others more elaborate. For example:
1. I walk into a large old hall of a college building. It seems to be Steven
Pinkers office, or a classroom where he teaches.
2. I am standing on a bluff.
3. In a house with others (someone elses). On a couch in a den with J. to my left
and a man to his left.
4. I am in a meadow at twilight with J. It is huge, open, green, with gently
rolling hills at the edges. There is a pedestrian tunnel or passageway.
5. I come out of a building at dark, early evening in winter, onto a slippery
backyard slope with someone else.
6. I am lying on a table, like a hospital operating table, in a room with cognitive
science and linguistics faculty.
7. At a show of some kind, like the Spectrum or other indoor amphitheatre. I sit
next to J. in a sideways-facing mezzanine level.
8. I happen on a park with a pool, amid rolling hills and open space.
9. I am in a large house/building with others. A room with a huge scorpion
running around.
10. I am in a tower, with members of a committee.


4
Despite my reluctance to expose personal material, the ready access these data
permit to a network of associations in my waking life is a compelling reason to draw from
them. I refer to myself as the dreamer in this analysis because in looking at my dream texts, I
do not feel identical to the I of the dream so much as represented by a dream character who
seems to be me.
11. I am with some man--J., V., a composite, or someone. We arrive at a
museum parking lot.
12. Flying in an airplane with a man, maybe two.

As diverse as the surface features of these settings described by these statements
may be, each one describes the dreamers initial location. Sometimes the opening
statement incorporates other characters in the dream. In (4), for example, the first
sentence consists of a statement of physical setting, temporal setting, and actors. The
first sentence in (3), by contrast, situates the dreamer in a location that includes other
people who are not individualized, although it is made clear that this is not the
dreamers domicile. The second sentence specifies the dreamers position in the setting,
and includes information about the dreamers position with respect to other actors, now
depicted as individuals. In (5) the initial sentence shows the dreamer and an unnamed
character actually entering upon the scene, which is described in terms of both time and
place.
Occasionally the introduction of actors precedes that of location, as in e.g., (11).
Finally, sometimes the opening sentence describes location, characters, and a situation,
all three, as in (12).
The second (and third) sentence of the Exposition phase of these dream texts
may provide further description of that place, e.g. (4), It is huge, open, green, with
gently rolling hills at the edges. There is a pedestrian tunnel or passageway, or it may,
additionally, incorporate a situation in progress, as in (9), A room with a huge scorpion
running around.
Almost as easily found in my journal, however, are dream reports in which
characters and setting seem to be of secondary or no importance, for the dream text
begins directly with a statement of the situation, occasionally incorporating the dreamer
as actor. For example:
13. Someone has advertised something in the newspaper something for sale.
With someone else driving, we go to meet this person at a designated spot on
the highway. It appears to be San Francisco-like, and we have to drive onto a
bridge that is partly mostly underwater. Several cars have either been wrecked
or stranded off to the left.

14. There is a fire somewhere nearby.
The kids and I go out to see where, and after some confused searching, turning
in this direction and that, I see the fire blazing on top of a (suburban) hill,
burning down a house, I think. Later we seem to be closer to it and I see some
kind of glass office building in ruins, post-fire smouldering.

15. I am looking for our (familys) plane tickets to China.
The flight is for 5 p.m. tomorrow, and I want to confirm it. I keep looking in the
stack of papers inside my top drawer, but I cant see close up anymore, so I
dont find it --perhaps because I just keep missing seeing it.

16. I am a substitute drummer for the Grateful Dead.
For some reason Mickey Hart (the only drummer for the Dead in the dream), is
sick or otherwise unavailable, and I have been selected to play in his stead.

17. My cookware (pots and pans) is chipped.
The stainless steel, I think, but especially my cast iron skillet, which more
closely resembles V.s iron pan. There is a wavy, bite-sized chip in it about an
inch or so long.

In (13) and (14), subsequent sentences do provide information on setting and
characters, although in (14) they are incorporated into an elaboration of the situation. In
(15), the opening statement of situation is followed by one of explanation for the
activity, which is followed in turn by a sentence providing minimal information on the
dreamers location (before the top drawer). In (16), the dream report opens with a
statement of the dreamers situation, which is followed by an explanation for this state
of affairs, recognized as unusual even in the dream. Setting and finally characters are
introduced in this dream only after several more sentences which expand upon the
initial situation.
The dream text of (17), presented in its brief entirety above, consists of a static
image of a set of objects. Aside from the dreamer as witness to the image, there are no
characters and there is no setting or action, merely this one situation.
To summarize, there are considerable possibilities for variation within the
Exposition phase which nevertheless preserve its structure. I found no examples of
dreams that did not have any of the elements identified by Jung as pertaining to this
phase within the first few statements of the text; even dreams such as (17) which
consisted of a single image had at least the element of a situation in some, albeit
unidentified, space. The initial statements of dream reports seem to fit Chafes statement
on narratives in general --they give evidence that the mind has a need for orientation in
terms of space, time, social context, and ongoing events (Chafe 1990:97), this evidence
being that narratives typically begin with a statement of the particular place, time,
characters, and background activity against which the events of the narrative proper
then unfold (Chafe 1990:94). Or, to use Chatmans term, this orientation is achieved
through a statement of existents.
Full dream text
Turning now to the remaining phases of the dream as suggested by Jung
(Development,
Culmination, and Solution or Result), I present a dream report in its entirety in order to
investigate the presence of these phases and their narrative elements. The numbering of
the statements is my division into the phases.
5
The Exposition phase of this dream text,
consisting of a statement of place and a statement about the protagonists, was
introduced as (7); it is repeated here as (18a):
18. At an Indoor Amphitheatre with J.
18a. At a show of some kind, like the Spectrum or other indoor amphitheatre. I sit
next to J. in a sideways-facing mezzanine level.
18b. During intermission, I go out and realize the music can be heard out here.
Standing around one of the entrances, I sing along with the music it sounds like
the Grateful Dead, at least vaguely. I note with someone passing from out to in
how you can hear the show outside [its in some big city, but which ?], but we
agree wed prefer to be inside.
18c. It looks like its E., and he adds, as he passes me going in, how its only five
dollars anyway. I think for a moment, because I paid more, and realize that was
for reserved seats. Did I really need them?
18d. I make my way back to my seat. J. already seated in his. A woman like G. [from
UT] comes along and we try to figure out which is her seat, since shes trying to
sit in mine.



5
Although it has no direct bearing on the question of narrative structure, readers
interested in the story content of the dream may find it useful to know that at the time of the
dream, I had recently begun a full-time faculty position at a university in a Southern state, after
teaching part-time in the Midwest since graduate school (UT). I was also about to be divorced
from someone (J.) whose academic career had taken precedence over mine and as a result
was the main reason I had remained for years in what I considered a one-down position of
university adjunct. E. is a person of brief, distant acquaintance to me who had recently become
a professor in a field where training is in demand by students but which I consider
academically soft, so in my opinion E. found a faculty position with less struggle than I did. G.
is an acquaintance from my graduate school days who at the time was apparently content to
be an adjunct lecturer supporting her husband, a graduate student preparing for an academic
career.
In (18a) there is both a statement of setting (indoor amphitheatre), and a
statement of actors (dreamer and dreamers spouse), as well as further information on
the situation in progress (a show of some kind) and of the actors specific position in the
amphitheatre: not only are they at the mezzanine level of this amphitheatre, but they are
facing sideways. Thus the Exposition positions the actors as spectators to the
performance of some ongoing action, yet they are not facing this action directly, but
rather indirectly, i.e. sideways (possibly a pun that they are not facing the music with
respect to a situation).
The next, Development, phase of the dream I have identified as (18b).
Something is supposed to occur; tension develops and the situation becomes
complicated in the Development phase. The development in the present text appears to
be rather ordinary. The dreamer leaves her initial position and exits the structure, a shift
of position which causes her to become an outsider after having been an insider
adjacent to a spouse. The dreamer is still participating in the action of the performance
from this exterior position, not as a spectator facing the stage sideways, but as an actor
in the open air, with greater freedom of movement, who from this fringe position
actually participates in the action of the show. Using terms from narratology, the dream
text depicts actors acting in events at this phase.
The Culmination phase of this dream, which would see something decisive
occurring or changing suddenly, I have identified as (18c). The dreamer is speaking
here with another outsider who is on his way in. This brief exchange of talk
introduces a puzzle into the narrative. The dreamer learns that some people, at least,
paid less for their seats than she did. Why did she pay more? The question seems to be
resolved upon the realization that the dreamers seats were reserved. But a further
concern is then introduced: it seems now as though it might not have been necessary to
pay extra for reserved seats, although no definitive resolution about this is offered at this
stage. But the matter of reserved seating seems to be pivotal, for a doubt has been
introduced. Was the dreamer duped through naivety? Perhaps she has merely been
overly cautious. Or it may be that the purchase of reserved seating was wise. Perhaps
the dreamer is more vulnerable than others to the loss of her seat and needs the added
protection of reserved seating, or perhaps she simply had to pay a higher price than
others to guarantee her place. Events at this phase allow for these questions to be posed,
although they remain unanswered here.
The final part of the dream presents the Solution or Result, identified as (18d).
The dreamer has left her seat, exited the building, learned something about seating in
the amphitheater, and now returns to her seat with this new information. To find
someone else occupying ones seat presents a response to the question of whether or not
it was necessary to pay for reserved seating. For here is someone from the dreamers
past in her seat, and only her reserved ticket proves that the dreamer, and not this
acquaintance from her graduate school days, is entitled to occupy this particular seat. So
it was a good idea to have a reserved seat after all.
This dream, while not the stuff of high drama, nevertheless conforms to the
general characterization of narrative as the representation of ... events and situations in
a time sequence (Prince) with actors acting and experiencing events. It also conforms
to Jungs phases and can be said to have an identifiable beginning, middle, and end,
wherein, following orientation to the existents, there is a development of the situation, a
problem identified, a question or puzzle to which the problem gives rise, and a response
to that puzzle, resulting ultimately in a shift from one equilibrium to another
(Todorov).
Although many additional dream reports I have reviewed also seem to conform
to this suggested narrative pattern, not all do. Short dream fragments, for example, seem
to resemble snapshots more than stories. If some dream reports have narrative structure,
but others do not, then it is not the case that we inevitably impose narrative form on
dreams in order to relate them, since we are capable of reporting dreams that do not
conform to this structure. Recall that for Freud, secondary revision does not appear to
accompany the construction of dreams invariably (Freud 1900:496). This in turn lends
support to the view that our dream reports may be fair representations of our dreams
after all.
5. Concluding thoughts
By way of conclusion, I would like to highlight three points.
First, I hope to have demonstrated convincingly that the dream-once-dreamed is
a text, one that often but not always has narrative structure. The dream text is made up
of strands of disparate thoughts weaving their way through our minds as we sleep. The
loom which allows these threads to be woven together is a narratizing process that is
part of human cognition. The dream report is also a text which, as a representation, will
reflect the narrative structure of the experienced dream or its absence. But as a linguistic
representation, the verbal dream report will also enhance the narrative organization of
the dream text. An analogy may be made with the structuring that occurs when we
express our waking thoughts in spoken or written language: the content of ideas is in
essence the same whether it is expressed or only thought, but expressing thoughts
through linguistic representation structures them in specific ways.
Further, dream texts will vary in their degree of narrativity, ranging from
fragmentary snapshot to epic tale.
6
Some remembered dreams seem less coherent than
others, but it is still the case that we remember a dream, no matter how bizarre or
tenuous the connection between images seems to the waking mind. So, we do not
necessarily impose narrative structure on the dream, since we are as capable of reporting
a dream with narrative form as without.
For a dream to have narrative form is necessarily for it to have structured
content, but not necessarily to have a message in the sense of a lesson.
7
However


6
Possibly the degree of narrativity in dreams is connected with whether dreams are
experienced in REM or non-REM sleep (see Hartmann 1996 on REM sleep as the source of
most or our memorable dreams). Or perhaps the relative dominance of left or right brain
hemispheric functions during dreaming can account for varying degrees of dream narrativity
(see discussion in Hunt 1989).

7
Alternatively, a dream-text may have multiple messages, and what Corti has said of
the literary text may apply equally to the dream-text: Every text is many texts in that the very
nature of its polysemic complexity prevents identically repetitive readings even in the same
minimally, simple action sequences which begin and end and are ordered with respect to
each other, involving characters, settings, and usually the tension of a dilemma, do
count as narratives. What we usually call a story is a product of having imposed
conventional narrative structures on selected content. But I dont see that dreams are
trying to become stories (Hunt 1989:177) so much as they are rudimentary, unrefined
stories, a shifting from one equilibrium to another (Todorov).
My second point has to do with the relation of narrative structure to language.
Two possibilities present themselves concerning the nature of this relationship. One is
that narratizing is a cognitive process, but not a linguistic one. This seems to be the
position of Turner (1996), for example, who claims that narrative imaginingstory
is the fundamental instrument of thought, that it is our chief means of looking into the
future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining and that it is a capacity
indispensable to human cognition generally (pp. 4-5). Turner speculates that the
linguistic mind is a consequence and subcategory of the literary mind. (p.141) That is,
the ability to recognize and execute small spatial stories (p.25) precedes linguistic
expression.
The other possibility is that narratizing is a linguistic process, which means that
all narratives are the product of verbal thought, and even phenomena such as mime acts
and wordless comic strips, while legitimately qualifying as narratives, can nevertheless
only be generated and in turn interpreted by language users. I am not here committing
to one or the other possibility concerning the role of language in the narrative process,
but I mention the issue because it is relevant to my final point.
My final point concerns the relation of language to dreaming, a complex issue
which can only be mentioned here (see Kilroe 1999b). If narratizing is a cognitive
process independent of language, then narrative-like dreams are not necessarily
generated by language. But if narratizing is a linguistic process, then dreams with a
narrative quality are either essentially unconscious verbal thoughts illustrated by
imagery, or they are a weave of unconscious presentational imagery and
representational verbal thought (cf. Hunt 1989).
So one type of dream may consist of a sequence of images illustrating
unconscious verbal thoughts, which are the subliminal continuation of the mind chatter
that we experience while awake. Not all dreams are necessarily structured this way, but
those that are can often be matched to verbally established metaphors, puns, and other
linguistic phenomena (Kilroe 1999a). And although dream images may be drawn from
and recombined out of nonverbal perceptions stored in memory, it would still be verbal
thought that motivates these images to come together to form a text.
From this point of view, disparate strands of verbal thought make up the
dreamers mental discourse, from scattered impressions to focused preoccupations.
These strands are unconsciously woven into narrative form while we sleep, resulting in
a discourse of imagery that forms a dream text which we report, usually verbally, as our
dream. Opacity between the dream report and the unconscious verbal thoughts prevents

cultural context (1978:42). And it is the interpreter of a text who at least partially constructs
its meaning and supplies its coherence.
the straightforward retrieval of the latter into consciousness.
8
It is like trying to tell a
story from the illustrations alone and not having access to the verbal text that gave rise
to the illustrations in the first place we may be correct in saying what the authors
story is, or partially correct, or simply mistaken.
In any case, whether dreams are generated by linguistic processes or by
nonlinguistic cognitive processes, the study of the form of dreams helps to show that
narrative structure is not an artful invention but rather a natural process of the mind.
References
Bal, M. (1985). Narratology: Introduction to the theory of narrative. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Barthes, R. (1994). The semiotic challenge. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press. Trans. Richard Howard. [Originally published in French as Laventure
smiologique, 1985, Paris, ditions du Seuil.]
Chafe, W. (1990). Some things that narratives tell us about the mind. In B.K. Britton &
A.D. Pellegrini (Eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language (pp. 79-98). Hillsdale,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Chatman, S. (1978). Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film. Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press.
Corti, M. (1978). An introduction to literary semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Danesi, M. (1999). Of cigarettes, high heels, and other interesting things. New York:
St. Martins Press.
Deely, J. (1990). Basics of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Foulkes, D. (1982). Childrens dreams. New York: Wiley & Sons.
Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of dreams. Trans. J. Strachey, 1965. New York:
Avon Books.
Hartmann, E. (1996). Outline for a theory on the nature and functions of dreaming.
Dreaming, vol. 6, no. 2.


8
But note that while this echoes Freud in agreeing that dreams are formed from
thoughts of which we are unaware, it is not identical to claiming that the true dream consists
of latent thoughts that both motivate and hide behind a manifest dream. Following Jung, I take
the dream-as-dreamed to be a valid object of study. This does not prevent us from inquiring
into the source of dreams, however, including, in this case, the role of verbal thinking in dream
formation.
Hunt, H. (1989). The multiplicity of dreams: Memory, imagination, and consciousness.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jung, C. G.(1974). Dreams. From The collected works of C.G. Jung, vols. 4,8,12,16.
Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kilroe, P. (1999a). What is a play on words without words? Consider the dream pun.
Ms. under review.
Kilroe, P. (1999b). The role of language in dreaming. Paper presented through the
University of Louisiana-Lafayette Mind & Matter colloquium series, November 5,
1999.
Kilroe, P. (1998). Freudian artifacts and imprints of imagination: Signification in
language and dreaming, presented at the 23
rd
annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of
America, Toronto, October 18, 1998.
Kilroe, P. (1997). Toward a semiotics of dreams. Paper presented at the 22
nd
annual
meeting of the Semiotic Society of America, Louisville, Kentucky, October 24, 1997.
Kramer, M. (1993). Dream translation: An approach to understanding dreams. In G.
Delaney
(Ed.), New directions in dream interpretation (pp.155-194). Albany: SUNY Press.
Kramer, M., L. Kinney, and M. Scharf. 1983. Dream incorporation and dream function.
In W. Koella (Ed.), Sleep 1982: The 6
th
European congress on sleep research, Zurich,
1982 (pp. 369-71). Basel: Karger.
Kramer, M., T. Roth, and J. Czaya. (1975). Dream development within a REM period.
In P. Levin and W. Koella (Eds.), Sleep 1974: The 2
nd
European congress on sleep
research, Rome,1974 (pp. 406-08). Basel: Karger.
Nth, W. (1990). Handbook of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Prince, G. (1982). Narratology: The form and functioning of narrative. Berlin: Mouton.
Roffwarg, H., W. Dement, J. Muzio, and C. Fisher. (1962). Dream imagery:
Relationship to rapid
eye movements of sleep. Archives of General Psychiatry, 7, 235-58.
Sarbin, T.R. (1986). The narrative as a root metaphor for psychology. In T.R. Sarbin
(Ed.), Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct (pp.3-21). New
York: Praeger.
Solms, M. (1997). The neuropsychology of dreams. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
States, B. (1997). Seeing in the dark. New Haven: Yale University Press.
States, B. (1993). Dreaming and storytelling. Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Press.
States, B. (1988). The rhetoric of dreams. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Taub, J., M. Kramer, D. Arand, and G. Jacobs. (1978). Nightmare dreams and
nightmare
confabulations. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 19, 285-91.
Todorov, T. (1986). Structural analysis of narrative. In R.C. Davis (Ed.), Contemporary
literary criticism: Modernism through poststructuralism. New York: Longman.
Toolan, M. J. (1988). Narrative: A critical linguistic introduction. London and New
York: Routledge.
Turner, M. (1996). The literary mind: The origins of thought and language. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Ullman, M. (1969). Dreaming as metaphor in motion. Archives of General Psychiatry,
21, 696-703.
Uspenskij, B.A., et al. (1973). Theses on the semiotic study of cultures. In J. van der
Eng & M. Grygar (Eds.), Structure of texts and semiotics of culture (pp. 1-28).The
Hague: Mouton.