In recent years dreaming has been characterized as an information-
processing activity that functions adaptively to match new experience with
representations of past events already stored in long-term memory. Nine
patients who reported dreams in psychotherapy were asked expressly if the
dream imagery recalled a specific event from early in their lives. Of 50
consecutively reported dreams, 46 were associated with early events whose
imagery appeared in the dream. When questioning about the past was omitted
in a later series of 34 dreams, the same patients spontaneously recalled
early events represented in the dream imagery only 13 times.Abstract Teaser