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respective neural network.
Freud believed the mind to be divided into three parts: conscious, preconscious, and
unconscious. In these terms, the activation of a schema above a critical thresh-old results in a
conscious experience.
Schemas with too little activation to influence any other schemas remain unconscious. Those
with sufficient acti-vation to influence the activation of other schemas, but insufficient
activation to themselves enter consciousness, are part of the preconscious mind.
An example will clarify these terms. Consider a word representing a schema which is probably
not currently activated in your mind: ocean. Until you read this word, your schema for ocean
was probably lying dormant in your unconscious mind, along with many other schemas that
you associate with the ocean. Now, however, you have ocean well activated above your
threshold for con-sciousness. Your ocean schema probably brought several other schemas along
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with it into consciousness, such as fish, sea gulls, and seashore. You may have thought of the
proverb  Only call yours what cannot be lost in a shipwreck.
In addition to raising several schemas to conscious-ness, the word ocean has also activated
some schemas to the preconscious level. These are schemas for things that you associate with
the ocean, though perhaps not as closely as the things that immediately came to mind. For
example, your schema for ship was probably at least slightly activated (though now it is in your
conscious mind).
Even if you didn t consciously think of ships, subcon-scious activation of your ship schema
could be demon-strated by showing you Figure 5. 1c. Like Steinfeld s subjects who had been
told a story about an ocean cruise, you should quickly recognize the figure as a ship. Thus,
schemas do not have to be in consciousness to affect your behavior.
A Model of Dreaming
The building of dreams
I suggested that dreams are simulations of the world cre-ated by our perceptual systems. The
introduction to wak-ing perception that you have just read will help you understand this theory.
Consider, first of all, how sleep modifies the process of perception. During REM sleep, as you
learned in chapter 2, sensory input from the outside world and body movement are both
suppressed, while the entire brain is highly active. The activity of the brain raises certain
schemas above their perceptual thresholds. These sche-mas enter consciousness, causing the
dreamer to see, feel, hear, and experience things not present in the ex-ternal environment.
Ordinarily, if you were to see something that wasn t really there, contradictory sensory input
would rapidly correct your mistaken impression. Why doesn t the same thing happen during
dreaming? The answer is because there is little or no sensory input available to the brain for
correcting such mistakes.
What we are likely to dream about Our experience in dreams is determined by which schemas
are activated above the threshold for consciousness. But what determines which schemas are
activated? The same processes that influence waking perception: expec-tation and motivation.
Expectation shows itself in dreams in many ways. When we construct a dream world we expect
that it will resem-ble past worlds we have experienced. Thus, dream worlds are almost always
equipped with gravity, space, time, and air. Likewise, recent experience influences dream-ing in
the same way it influences waking perception. Freud called this  day residue.
Personal interest, preoccupations, and concerns influ-ence dreaming as well as waking
perception. The min-ister who saw Nebuchadnezzar s fiery furnace in an inkblot might well
dream about the mad king of Babylon. Likewise, remember the study which found that police
officers were more likely than civilians to expect, and therefore see, crimes that weren t there?
Which group do you suppose would be more likely to dream about crime? Motivation and
emotions strongly influence waking perception, and we would expect the same for dreaming. In
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particular, you are likely to dream about what you desire wish-fulfillment dreams. Suppose,
for example, that you have gone to bed without your supper. Like the hungry schoolchildren
who were likely to interpret am-biguous figures as food, you will be likely to dream about food.
Freud was so impressed by the prevalence of wish fulfillment in dreams that he made it the
cornerstone of his entire theory of dreams. According to Freud, every dream is the fulfillment of
a wish. However, this appears to be overstating the case; nightmares are an obvious
counterexample.
Indeed, just as fear makes you more  jumpy,  that is, ready to interpret ambiguous stimuli as
danger while awake, it has the same effect in dreams. This is probably why people dream about
unpleasant and even horrible situations. The reason is not, as Freud believed, because they are
masochistic and unconsciously wish to be fright-ened. More likely it is because they are afraid [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]