Are dreams merely a random collection of previous experiences, thoughts, images and ideas amalgamated into some seemingly applicable sequence, or can a person dream imaginary and exceptional things which they have never before seen, heard of or even experienced?
Is the sleeping mind ever been shown to be capable of pure, unadulterated creation?
I’m no psychologist, but I think it’s going to depend on what counts as creation. I mean, I once had a dream with a plant whose leaves were shaped like butterflies. I’ve never seen this, but it’s not hard to visualize based on what I have seen.
Maybe I need to clarify a little:
In your example I can see how that amalgamation can be achieved by cutting and pasting of images you are familiar with into unusual situations. Same as flying, meeting famous people etc… This happens frequently in dreams and whilst sometimes bizarre is quite explainable.
I think what I am trying to ask is: if someone who had never seen (a picture of), heard of, or had described to him an object (like a steam train, for example), would or, more importantly, could it ever feature in a dream he may have? Could he imagine or create an image of an object where no previous knowledge of the object resided?
Yes - I’ve dreamed of people that I’ve definitely never met.
One dream was two women and there was a rapist/murderer, someone was killed at a garage behind a pub, it was the most horrific dream I ever had, I have NEVER known such terror. Even though I was lucid dreaming by the end of it, I remember thinking to myself: I will never be able to walk down the street again, I will never get rid of this terrible fear that is around me. I also saw their faces so distinctly in the dream - again I remember thinking: when I wake up, I will recognise those women when I see them.
To this day I never found out any more about that dream or have repeated it. Nor seen those women. If you believe in the paranormal, one explanation I have is that the extremely strong emotions of someone dying in terror somehow reached me.
And another time I had a dream about a guy I had never met. He was in my room with me, I can remember him more vividly than several ex boyfriends, and yet I have never seen him before, after, or dreamed of him since.
istara- I think you’re missing what the OP meant. You abviously have heard of rape etc. so the entire concept wasn’t foreign to you. The OP is talking about something you have absolutely no knowledge of.
In answer to the OP - I reckon you could dream something you had never experienced / known about, but how would you know what it was ? You’d also probably forget since you have no associations in your mind between this object and anything you can relate to.
I don’t think the question is really meaningful. Everything can be made up from an amalgam of a few simple concepts. Even steam trains. Unless you can think of a counterexample.
If you’re asking whether someone who has never heard of trains or steam engines will just randomly have this exact image appear in her head, I’m going to go with “no”.
Where would that thought or image come from then, I wonder? Inherent in genetic material? Pure imaginative creation? ‘Meme’ imagery? Has there been any recorded examples of people in, say very backward 3rd world countries (no access to books or TV) sketching a dreamed image of a VW Beetle or a lamp post or telephone box or road sign, something which was completely beyond their realm of knowledge?
The more I try to rationalise the question the vaguer it becomes in my mind. Perhaps this is more suited to IMHO?
I think you may be right, Achernar, the question is, I now believe, flawed in conception.
How would you know the dreamer is not retrospectively applying your ideas to his weakly remembered dream, when you describe how the object he may have dreamed is actually real? It’s a little like in quantum theory, if you delve into the experiment, your act of looking can affect or change the potential outcome.
Do blind people dream images?
The difference is, they can dream what they have had explained to then, or what they have touched and explored through other senses.
See herefor many a thread on such a question.
Do you have something specific in mind? It sounds like some sort of psychic phenomenon if I understand right. Not that that means it’s impossible, but I think it would be well-known if this happened frequently.
Nope, sorry. It would appear I am making it up as I go along. 
There was a line in the book I am currently reading, something to the effect that “…the child dreamed again of places he had never been, and things he had never heard or seen…”, and the question formed from there, namely; could you dream something you had never heard of or ever seen? But on further thought it seems rather a futile concept to explore.
This was not a question borne out of any personal experience.
I’ve never seen a purple monster wearing an orange hat before, but he’s waltzed through my dreams on occasion.
But you do have a concept of ‘monster’ in your mind (from TV, films, campfire stories and books you may have read). You also have an idea of a hat and of the colours orange and purple. It is just another collage of previously held ideas that you have described here, albeit organised in a form you have perhaps not previously considered in your waking hours.
I don’t see why not.
Consciously, you are able to take abstract concepts and work them into new ideas.
Why not unconsciously as well?
That way you might be able to extrapolate a new idea/location/device in your sleep.
Proving it will be difficult though, especially given the difficulty one has remembering dreams.
Eg. you dream of a place - does that place actually exist somewhere to validate your idea?
(ref. Kevin Costener’s movie Dragonfly)
When I was youger I had dreams of places I had never visited, i.e. Disneyworld, London. What appeared in my dream was my perception based on pictures or descriptions of what I had heard or seen of these places.
When visiting them later in real life nothing matched up with what I had dreamed them to be so vividly.
No. I don’t belive its possible. Dreams are an amalgamation of all the things you have already experienced. As Achernar said, pretty much anything can be made up with the various combinations of things we encounter in our lives.
By definition, if you know nothing about it, and you surmise it can’t be tiled together from previous experiences then it must be psychic. And I don’t belive in any kind of psychic mumbo jumbo.
No. I don’t belive its possible. Dreams are an amalgamation of all the things you have already experienced. As Achernar said, pretty much anything can be made up with the various combinations of things we encounter in our lives.
By definition, if you know nothing about it, and you surmise it can’t be tiled together from previous experiences then it must be psychic. And I don’t belive in any kind of psychic mumbo jumbo.
FWIW, i’ve dreamt of places i have never been (in my city) and then later gone there and been like… ‘hey… wait a second…’
maybe coincidence… maybe not.
