As Erik Craig said .
while we dream we entertain a wider range of human possibilities then .
when awake; the "open house" of dreaming is less guarded (Craig, .
1992).
Superficially, we are all convinced that we know just what a .
"dream" is. But the most cursory investigation into the dream's.
essence suggests that after describing it as a mental something which .
we have while sleeping," and perhaps, in accord with experiments .
currently being carried out in connection with the physiological .
accompaniments of dreaming, such as Rapid-Eye Movements (REM), the .
various stages and depths of dream activity as reflected in changing .
rates of our vital signs (pulse-rate, heart-beat, brain-waves), and .
the time of the night when various kinds of dreams occur, we come up .
against what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the "Ding-An-Sich" .
('thing-in-itself'), and find ourselves unable to penetrate further .
into the hidden nature of this universal human experience (Fromm, .
1980).
It has been objected on more than one occasion that we in fact .
have no knowledge of the dreams that we set out to interpret, or, .
speaking more correctly, that we have no guarantee that we know them .
as they actually occurred. In the first place, what we remember of a .
dream and what we exercise our interpretative arts upon has been .
mutilated by the untrustworthiness of our memory, which seems .
incapable of retaining a dream and may have lost precisely the most.
important parts of its content. It quite frequently happens that when .
we seek to turn our attention to one of our dreams, we find ourselves .
regretting the fact that we can remember nothing but a single .
fragment, which itself has much uncertainty. Secondly, there is every.
reason to suspect that our memory of dreams is not only fragmentary .
but inaccurate and falsified. On the one hand it may be doubted .
whether what we dreamt was really as hazy as our recollection of it, .
