In the article, the author writes:<p>> Why devote this kind of energy to the creation of wildly imaginative and highly emotional nocturnal experiences for an audience of one?<p>I think that this is a mistake. The audience size is greater than one.<p>The author also writes that dreams “[give] us outrageous scenarios so we can better understand the everyday, serving as an overnight therapist”. I believe this is a multiplayer game.<p>I am a psychotherapist (in training). When people report their dreams, they normally do not mention their own behaviour. However, when their behaviour is investigated it often looks odd given the “outrageous scenario” they are in. More specifically, the behaviour often reveals clear displays of their unconscious interpersonal anxieties that their waking symptomology only opaquely reveals. An example, might be someone who is “shy” when awake behaving in an outrageously passive way, when in a confrontation; a confrontation that their waking shyness - which might include symptoms which mean they avoid contact with others - would have meant that they would not have had. It is no surprise that people do not typically report their own behaviour within dreams, as that is the nature of unconscious beliefs - we think they are unremarkable and true. Often an outsider is required to notice that the behaviour is unusual given the “outrageous situation” - often the role of a therapist (who shares this theory on dreams).<p>In the paper linked below, I outline many examples of this, and discuss the surprisingly specific supporting neurology:<p><a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/k6trz" rel="nofollow">https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/k6trz</a><p>This paper was discussed on Hacker News previously. The link to that discussion is:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590</a>