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Help ! In your erotic dream, your sexual partner has taken on the features of a boring colleague or a neighbor who is far from what you fantasize about? Here is what we can deduce from it according to a neurologist.
An erotic dream is rather pleasant. But the anecdote can quickly become confusing (or even guilt-inducing) if the person who virtually made you climb the curtains is none other than your boss, your colleague or even your concierge… At least a person who does not attract you. Waking up is complicated. Are you secretly attracted to it?
The total fruit of our imagination in freedom
For Dr. Rahul Jandial, an American neuroscientist who is releasing a book on the subject (Why we dream, Leduc April 24, 2024), this is not the case (phew!). Or at least there are two common types of erotic dreams over which we have little control:
- The sexual dream involving someone you are attracted to and about whom you regularly fantasize about while you are awake;
- The sex dream that features seemingly random people, even if the dreamer doesn’t like them or finds them unattractive.
And these would be relatively common. Indeed, when we dream, the imagination is free, free to find loose associations and connections in our memories. This can cause us to think about people around us in surprising, disturbing, and even erotic ways, because our brain’s logical executive network, like judgment, is disabled during dreaming. (Which can also cause us to breathe underwater, or act completely absurd in a dream).
“This moderating influence on our erotic imagination when we are awake disappears when we dream, allowing our erotic dreams to be extremely creative and exploratory” confirms Dr. Jandial. “If our daytime fantasies are visions of a desired, albeit improbable, sexual outcome, erotic dreams are more like a lustful thought experiment. We may change sex or become bisexual in our dreams, even if it never occurs to us during the day or in our most liberated fantasy.”
Ryan Gosling or Didier from accounting, everything is possible (and random)
However, it may be surprising (and unfortunate!) to know that the mind rarely includes the ideal sexual partner to play with in its erotic dreams. Most often, the dreamer knows the star of his erotic dream personally, even if the dream is extremely ordinary, unattractive or even repulsive. According to the neurologist, sex dreams often feature former partners, former bosses, co-workers, friends, neighbors and even family members, and often take place in familiar contexts, because as Dr. Jandial says, erotic dreams tend not to look outside “the tribe” but to stay close to home.
The only hope of a dream that’s a little more titillating? Being a fan of an actor or actress, for example, can include them in your mind’s “panels” of choices. For the neurologist, sometimes, celebrities have literally taken root in our neuronal architecture. Our response to them suggests that they are as familiar to us as a long-time friend or neighbor… So who will be the next person to knock on your door while you sleep, Ryan Gosling or Didier from Accounting? Anything is possible (and it’s not that bad).