Cognitive Operations, and Non-Conscious Processing in Dreams and Waking Verbal Reports

Abstract

From findings based on empirical data and a specifically developed qualitative methodology, it is suggested that numbers presented in dream and waking verbal reports are processed cognitively as constructivistic non-conscious internal representations that are structurally isomorphic to physical external referents. The data suggest that numbers function structurally and imaginally, similar to numbers reported by Freud in dreams, and by others in primitive myths. The analysis of such data is based on a non-interpretive content and context analysis. In presenting a set of cognitive operations which function specifically with numerical structures, it is suggested that affective schemata are involved in the cognitive construction of numerical representations. Implications are discussed in terms of cognitive psychology in general, for the relationship of dream processes to waking cognition, and for similar anomalous data.