The Last Sanctum of Archetypes

Rethinking Dreams in the Light of Ancient Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence

Authors

  • Maja Gutman Mušič

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2023.411

Keywords:

ancient dreaming, archetypes, artificial intelligence, dream data, cross-cultural dream analysis

Abstract

Despite numerous attempts to integrate dream research into a vast array of scientific disciplines, there appears to be no consensus on why and how we dream. This millennia-old universal human phenomenon appears to be too elusive to be thoroughly understood by a single scientific discipline and too complex and data-rich to be studied only theoretically. However, another dimension to dreams and dreaming could promise an integrative approach: the culture-historical component that merges with recent advances in Artificial Intelligence. This paper briefly examines conceptual understandings of dreams before the dawn of modern science – specifically, the Native American, Mesopotamian, ancient Greek, and Hippocratic principles of dream practices and knowledge – in an attempt to understand the contemporary dream research field better and to outline future avenues for a data-driven approach while remaining grounded in its epistemological foundation.

References

Aserinsky, Eugene, and Nathaniel Kleitman. “Regularly Occurring Periods of Eye Motility, and Concomitant Phenomena, During Sleep.” Science 118 (1953): 273–74. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.118.3062.273.

Barrett, Deirdre. “Dreams and Creative Problem-Solving.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1406 (1): 64–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13412.

Bulkeley, Kelly. n.d. “Sleep and Dream Database.” SDDb. Accessed September 27, 2023. https://sleepanddreamdatabase.org/.

Cunningham, Scott. Dreaming the Divine. Los Angeles: Llewellyn Pubblications, 2016.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Basic Books, 2010.

Garfield, Patricia. The Universal Dream Key. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.

Getsinger, Stephen H. “Dreaming, Religion, and Health.” Journal of Religion and Health 17, no. 3 (1978): 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01597272.

Glaskin, Katie. “Dreams, Memory, and the Ancestors: Creativity, Culture, and the Science of Sleep.” Journal of the Royan Anthropological Institute 17, no. 1 (2011): 44–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2010.01668.x.

Glaskin, Katie. “Dreams, Perception, and Creative Realization.” Topics in Cognitive Science 7, no. 4 (2015): 664–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12157.

Gutman Music, Maja, Pavan Holur, and Kelly Bulkeley. “Mapping Dreams in a Computational Space: A Phrase-Level Model for Analyzing Fight/Flight and Other Typical Situations in Dream Reports.” Consciousness and Cognition 106 (2022): 103428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2022.103428.

Hall, Calvin S., and Robert L. Van de Castle. The Content Analysis of Dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966.

Hartmann, Ernest. “The Waking-to-Dreaming Continuum and the Effects of Emotion.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23, no. 6 (2000): 947–50. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00474029.

Haskell, Robert E. “Cognitive Psychology and Dream Research: Historical, Conceptual, and Epistemological Considerations.” The Journal of Mind and Behavior 7, no. 2/3 (1986): 131–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43853212.

Hippocrates. On Dreams. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Vol. IV. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1931.

Hobson, J. Allan, and Robert W. McCarley. “The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream Process.” The American Journal of Psychiatry 134, no. 12 (1977): 1335–48. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.134.12.1335.

Hughes, J. Donald. “Dream Interpretation in Ancient Civilizations.” Dreaming 10, no. 1 (2000): 7–18. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1009447606158.

Irwin, Lee. “Dreams, Theory, and Culture: The Plains Vision Quest Paradigm.” American Indian Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1994): 229–45. https://doi.org/10.2307/1185248.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Dreams. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Jung, Carl Gustav. Children’s Dreams: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Kahn, David, and J. Allan Hobson. “Self-Organization Theory of Dreaming.” Dreaming 3, no. 3 (1993): 151–78. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0094378.

Laughlin, Charles D., and Adam J. Rock. “What Can We Learn from Shamans’ Dreaming? A Cross-Cultural Exploration.” Dreaming 24, no. 4 (2014): 233–52. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038437.

McNamara, Patrick, and Kelly Bulkeley. “Dreams as a Source of Supernatural Agent Concepts.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00283.

Mittermaier, Amira. Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010.

Plane, Ann Marie, and Tuttle, Leslie. “Dreams and Dreaming in the Early Modern World.” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 3 (Fall 2014): 917–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/678778.

Schredl, Michael. “Creativity and Dream Recall.” Journal of Creative Behavior 29, no. 1 (1995): 16–24. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1995.tb01420.x.

Schredl, Michael, and Daniel Erlacher. “Self-Reported Effects of Dreams on Waking-Life Creativity: An Empirical Study.” The Journal of Psychology 141, no. 1 (2007): 35–46. https://doi.org/10.3200/jrlp.141.1.35-46.

Sleep and Dream Database. “Rose journal 2020.” December 21, 2019. https://sleepanddreamdatabase.org/response_sets/754e5dfe-73b6-4d1a-a1c8-ca40ed047b43/7be91eea-466d-40e2-93e9-999124f1656b.

Tedlock, Barbara, ed. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. New Mexico, NM: School of America Research Press, 1992.

Tedlock, Barbara. “The Poetics and Spirituality of Dreaming: A Native American Enactive Theory.” Dreaming 14, no. 2–3 (2004): 183–89. https://doi.org/10.1037/1053-0797.14.2-3.183.

Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Uršič, Marko. “The Gaze of the Soul and of the Angel in the Renaissance Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino.” Ars & Humanitas 9, no. 1 (2015): 58–75. https://doi.org/10.4312/ah.9.1.58-75.

Downloads

Published

2023-12-20

How to Cite

Gutman Mušič, Maja. 2023. “The Last Sanctum of Archetypes: Rethinking Dreams in the Light of Ancient Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence”. Poligrafi 28 (109/110):221-39. https://doi.org/10.35469/poligrafi.2023.411.