Here's a random poll

[conuly]

[Poll #1341345]

Comments

[neurotica0.livejournal.com]

I read in my dreams too! I didn't even realize it was unusual until someone told me that it was impossible. I also write in my dreams. (I dream that I'm an author a lot.) By the end of this conversation, the other person went away convinced that these things aren't possible with a "normal" brain and I'm "crazy."

[conuly]

Dreams are such personal things. I suppose researchers know what is and isn't normal, to an extent, but I don't think most people can claim to have that knowledge, not honestly.

[wodhaund.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. I've never written in my dreams. I wonder if I could (and if I could remember what I wrote once I woke up.)

I want to try now. :D

[leora.livejournal.com]

I wish people who didn't actually study dreams would stop saying things are impossible. I read in dreams regularly.

Now, I'm going to break my own rule. I haven't especially studied dreams beyond the bit in one psych class, but at least I have a degree in psychology and am giving this preface. What is difficult (but not impossible) to do in dreams is to write. And what is even harder than that is to read the same thing multiple times at different points in the dream, either by having written it down and then reading it or by reading it over and over. There's a very good reason for this. If the material isn't something easily memorable like a song or poem you already have memorized and your brain can store as a single chunk (e.g. for me Jabberwocky is written there, then that is enough for me to reproduce the entire poem) then it has to remember the whole note. In real life, paper is a memory saving device. You write it down and then you can drop it from your memory and you can bring it back by reading the paper. The problem is in a dream it isn't a memory saving device as the paper isn't real. So, you need to remember what is on the paper in order for it to be consistent. This is difficult to do and most people won't do it. However, you may not notice that the writing has changed.

I've also dyed in dreams. No, I didn't die in real life. I've also done one thing I was taught is impossible, but it didn't violate the spirit of the rule. While things in dreams change, there is (according to my psych prof) a logical consistency to the changes. That is things may turn into other things or people into animals, but things don't change between animate to inanimate. However, they did in one of my dreams, but it happened in a logically consistent way (a mad scientist did it) rather than in a random fashion.

However, I am very loathe to say ~anything~ is impossible to dreams. Especially as now I remember I need to add a ticky box to this poll to account for the dream where I watched the universe be formed and was watching the different forces freeze out (why yes, I did fall asleep studying astronomy). People can have amazingly bizarre dreams. Reading in a dream is not that freaky.

What makes me sad is when I read awesome stories in dreams and can't remember them when I wake up. Or when I read beautiful journals that I supposedly wrote and they are wonderful combinations of writing and illustrations I drew, often graphic stories, whereas in real life I cannot draw well at all. However, I did get one small comic strip from a line in a dream, so that's something I managed to bring back. And sometimes when I remember stuff from dreams they aren't actually clever or funny or good bits of writing.

[neurotica0.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever remember what I've written in a dream. I just remember the sight of myself making words on paper.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Umm, and I meant died. I actually cannot remember ever having dyed anything in a dream. But I have been killed.