Neurologist Patrick McNamara believes our nighttime reveries are “directly related to long-term sexual strategies”:
If dreaming somehow reflects our sexual wish-fulfillment, then dream recall, dream content and dream sharing should be relatively lower in those who are satisfied with their current attachment orientation (secure, dismissive, and avoidant) and relatively higher among those who want to change their status (the preoccupied/anxious group). To test this idea, my team at Boston University recruited hundreds of volunteers until we had enough in each attachment category. We asked them about their dreams, and coders who were blind to the purpose of the study painstakingly analyzed them.
When we collated the results, we were startled by what we found.
The anxious, preoccupied group was far more likely to recall dreams than the securely attached; they took less time to enter REM sleep and had many more dreams featuring aggression against competitors. But both the anxious and the securely attached recalled more dreams than avoidant participants. That is precisely the pattern one would predict if dream sleep were directly related to long-term sexual strategies. The anxious individual is passionately interested in getting into a relationship with a romantic target, and thus recalls more especially vivid and emotional dreams filled with content concerning intimacy. The avoidant individual, conversely, suppresses the subconscious call for sexual closeness as reflected in dreams.
(Henri Rousseau’s The Dream, 1910, via Wiki Commons)
The Dish 