Are the Faces We See in Dreams Borrowed From Real Life?
The idea that every face we encounter in our dreams belongs to someone we have seen in waking life has long been part of dream theory. It’s an idea both strange and comforting, suggesting that even our most imaginative dream visions have been stitched together from familiar memories.
But is there any proof for this theory? Experts say no.
“It’s one of those dream ‘facts’ that circulate endlessly online but don’t hold up to even close scrutiny. It also doesn’t have the historical pedigree of some older dream myths, like the idea that dying in a dream means you’ll die in real life,” says Deirdre Barrett, a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of The Sleep Committee.
Learn more: Is our brain always completely asleep? He can stay awake even while we dream
Seeing real faces in dreams could be science fiction
Dylan Selterman, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, agrees that the idea is “science fiction.” Selterman directs the Johns Hopkins DREAM Lab, a research institute focused on dream patterns and their relationship to waking life.
Barrett examined extensive collections of dream reports. She has encountered accounts of dreamers who have seen faces that cannot be drawn from waking memory—faces with multiple eyes, transparent faces, or “configurations that violate basic human anatomy.”
“These are decisive counterexamples. The dreaming brain is not limited to rereading stored photographs; it is perfectly capable of generating new faces by recombining features or by outright inventing them,” explains Barrett.
How might dream researchers test this theory?
Even if this theory had a basis, scientists cannot test it.
“How would scientists check this? Would they follow people and record every face they encounter, then record their every dream? Impossible,” says Selterman.
In other words, it would be impossible to determine the proportion of dream faces that correspond to real people encountered in waking life. No one can catalog every face they have ever seen, briefly or peripherally.
“But science does not require exhaustive proof when a single clear counterexample disproves a universal claim. The existence of even a small number of obviously impossible faces shows that the statement ‘you only dream of faces you’ve already seen’ cannot be true. Beyond that, further testing is not essential,” says Barrett.
Understanding What We See in Dreams
Perhaps a more pertinent question is why we dream, and the answers are as varied as the dreams themselves. Sigmund Freud presented dreams as wish fulfillment, while neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo suggests that dreams provide us with a safe place to act out our worst nightmares – two theories that are at odds with each other. Still others propose that dreams are meaningless byproducts of neural activity.
However, Barrett suggests that these answers might be too specific.
“We wouldn’t expect a one-sentence explanation for the purpose of arousing thought, and dreaming deserves the same generosity. Dreams reflect the same concerns that occupy us every day – our relationships, our fears, our hopes, our conflicts, our ambitions and our work – but they do so in a radically different neurochemical state,” says Barrett.
“I tend to think that the question itself calls for too clear an answer. We wouldn’t expect a single-sentence explanation for the purpose of thought-awakening, and dreaming deserves the same generosity. Dreams reflect the same concerns that occupy us every day – our relationships, our fears, our hopes, our conflicts, our ambitions and our work – but they do so in a radically different neurochemical state,” adds Barrett.
Learn more: Do octopuses dream? Their Colorful, Skin-Changing Sleep Cycles May Hold the Answer
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