A cognitive model explaining the psychophysiological system responsible for the effectiveness of The Storytelling Method of Dream Interpretation

Abstract

The Storytelling Method of dream interpretation has been found to be valid and reliable while yielding a meaningful interpretation for dreamers more than 80% of the time. A cognitive model explaining the psychophysiological system responsible for the effectiveness of the method is proposed. The model describes a dream in terms of an input–output relationship where the dream-builder system is viewed as a system whose input is given by the dream sources and whose output is given by the dream experience. The model proposes a cascade of two sub-systems that can account for basic properties of dreams such as the continuity hypothesis, the role of dreams in turning-points of a dreamer’s life, the problem-solving capacity of dreams, while accounting for the effectiveness of The Storytelling Method. An application of the model with the method is also demonstrated with an example.