Beschreibung:
AbstractDreamers copy images from memories, I ague in this article, to serve as metaphors for problems with a cultural model, but they change remembered images to comment on these problems. What this means is that dreaming is mimetic in nature. I define mimesis as copying with alterations, where the reproduction specifies a subject of thought and variations comment on that subject. In longer dreams, these alterations are of three types: (1) dreamers pose a question as a visually absent element of a memory; (2) dreamers re‐present the same question through a succession of different metaphors; and (3) dreamers blend images associated with a primary cultural model with images associated with a secondary cultural model. I base this argument on dream data collected from Northwestern American college students, zooming in on the dream of a young woman about her feet and about a cultural model I call “the Pinup” that is fundamental to the contemporary rating of female bodies.