Dreaming as delirium: A response to Allan Hobson

My response to Allan Hobson makes several points. Primarily, I argue that t he coherence of any dream cannot be determined by the recall of the dream e vents alone. Rather, coherence must surely reside in the dreamer's felt inv olvement in those dream events, and this is virtually impossible to determi ne from a dream report. Second, in response to Hobson's claim that a purely associative thought process neglects the role of dissociation, I argue tha t metaphor (analogical thinking in general), in all its forms, consists of a tension between resemblance and dissociation (a shift from one domain to another) and that the function of metaphor is, precisely, to free us fi-om the gravity of received understanding. I suggest ways in which this process operates in all speculation, including art and science. Finally, I discuss the nature of dream orientation in connection with the specimen dream that Hobson provided.