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The Anomalous Foundations of Dream Telling: Objective Solipsism and the Problem of Meaning

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Abstract

Little sociological attention is directed to dreams and dreaming, and none at all is directed to how people tell one another about dreams. Ordinary settings in which dreams are told mimic the conditions of “breaching” experiments and should produce anomie, but dream telling proceeds without trouble. Foundational orientations of ordinary dream talk assimilate into professional dream studies, where dream narratives are “data” and the analysis of narratives is “dream analysis.” That such practices proceed without trouble poses some interesting problems for sociology in terms of how anyone experiences “constraint” in the telling and hearing of dreams.

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Correspondence to Richard A. Hilbert.

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Hilbert, R.A. The Anomalous Foundations of Dream Telling: Objective Solipsism and the Problem of Meaning. Hum Stud 33, 41–64 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-010-9134-0

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