The continuity vs discontinuity hypotheses A consideration of issues for coding video game incorporation Commentary on " The continuity and discontinuity between waking and dreaming A Dialogue between
MS. In its general form, the continuity hypothesis (see Box 1) simply says that we dream of our waking life experiences (thoughts, feeling, events etc. Since Freud's "Die Traumdeutung" where he coined the term "Tagesreste (day residues)" nobody really doubts this kind of continuity between waking and dreaming. Dreams often contain elements of our recent or more distant waking life, not in terms of exact replay as the study of Fosse, Fosse, Hobson, and Stickgold (2003) has shown but on a thematic level, e.g. dreaming of our actual romantic partner, about a work situation and so on. We agree I think that the formal characteristics between dreaming and waking life experiencing are different best explained by the AIM model (see Box 2) different neuromodulators in the brain produce different modes of experiencing. Dreams are more bizarre and emotional, even though that's important to keep in mind the dreamer experiences the dream as real, as real as the waking world (with the exception of lucid dreams which occur quite rarely) AH. I have no doubt that the continuity hypothesis is valid. And, pace Freud, that some recent experience is represented in dreams. The question is: how much? And a related question concerns the source of that content which is not an apparent reproduction of prior waking experience. Freud, and you continuity theorists, are obliged to regard these dream elements as distorted or disguised transformations of prior waking experience. I am very skeptical of this explanation. For me, an alternative hypothesis, perhaps equally valid, posits discontinuity. In many ways this "discontinuity" hypothesis is interesting because it distinguishes between waking and dreaming by asserting that dreaming is not only the replay of waking experience. This raises the intriguing question: If dreaming is not entirely derived from waking experience, then just what is the source of the anomalous content and what is its function?