Last night I had two dreams in which I was being chased (once by a tour-de-france cyclist in Venice, once by a giant snake in a field, since you ask). I was thinking that being-chased dreams are probably my brain rehearsing escape behaviours – a night-time training programme built in by evolution. Thinking more on it, I realised that I have never had a chasing dream, only being-chased dreams. Is this because being-chased is more adaptive to rehearse, or because of something peculiar to my idiosyncratic psychology? Let’s find out, please vote using the poll below:
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http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/06/in_our_wildest_dream.html
As is often the case, Vaughan is there before me!
Tom are you turning to the dark side (evolutionary psychology)?
I don’t think that my dreams of being hunted would be very useful practice for reality. In reality the monster doesn’t generally have the ability to automatically know exactly where I am hiding, or to magically reapear in front of me as I run away. And my body isn’t (generally) frozen.
Surely the reason that we dream of being hunted more frequently than we dream of hunting others is more likely to be related to the way in which most people see themselves as the victims of other people’s aggression rather than the aggressor.
How many aggressive, unreasonable people see themselves as such? They see themselves as the victims- in other words their aggression is a form of exaggerated defense against perceived (unreal) aggression from others. Hence being hunted is a much more obvious psychological metaphor than hunting…
When you get being-chased dreams are you always pursued by an individual? I find that I am always chased by groups of identical pursuers, such as daleks or nazis, or suchlike.
Next one I get I’ll probably be chased by an entire peloton thanks to you.