Here is the main outline of the theory: - Dreaming is a form of mental functioning. It is one end of a continuum of mental functioning which runs from focused waking thought at one end, through reverie and daydreaming, to dreaming at the other end. - Dreaming is hyperconnective. At the dreaming end of the continuum, connections are made more easily than in waking, and connections are made more broadly and loosely. Dreaming avoids tightly structured, overlearned material. - [[Robert Stickgold - distant associations are made faster after REM sleep]] - The connections are not made randomly. They are guided by the emotions of the dreamer. - The dream, and especially the Central Image of the dream, pictures or expresses the dreamer's emotion. The Central Image is a measure of the power of the emotion. The more powerful the emotion, the more powerful (intense) is the Central Image. - This making of broad connections guided by emotion probably has an adaptive function, which we conceptualize as "weaving in" new material – in other words taking new experiences, especially if they are traumatic, stressful, emotional, and gradually connecting them, multiply connecting them, into existing memory. - In addition to this basic function of dreaming, the entire focused waking-to-dreaming continuum has an adaptive function. It is useful for us to be able to think in clear, focused, serial fashion at certain times, and at other times to associate more broadly, and loosely – in other words to dream. ![[Dream continuum.png]] --- **Source** Hartmann, Ernest. The Nature and Functions of Dreaming. Oxford University Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751778.001.0001.