32. Directed Dreaming

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It's time to apply everything you took in up till now about dreams, that is, articles, tests, and video and put them to work while listening to the audio which inspired the gap-filling exercise below.

Listening practice: Directed Dreaming

[adapted from New Success at First Certificate,

by Robert O’Neill, Michael Duckworth & Kathy Gude]

The interviewer is asking the psychologist about the kind of 1. ___ they are doing in their department. The doctor says that they are trying to find out about an area of 2. ___ ___ to them at the moment, namely 3. ___ ___.

In order to explain the notion, the psychologist gives the example of the quite common experience humans have  of 4. ___ ___ in the middle of the dream and 5. ___ ___ to the dream when they go back to sleep. 

Unlike such random instances, 6. ___ ___ are trained people who are able to 7. ___ the contents of their dreams almost 8. ___.

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Research aims to find out whether everybody may develop the ability in a similar degree to that of the three 9. ___ dreamers they work with.

One of the experiments they are currently carrying out consists in asking these very 10. ___ subjects to dream about 11. ___ ___ each other while they are sleeping.

Their task was to go – in the dream – to a 12. ___ down by the river that they knew and 13. ___ ___ each other.

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On the following day, during separate interviews, the two male subjects told the psychiatrist that they 14. ___ ___ a dream and could remember it; that in their dream, they had met down there, and had had a talk, but that they hadn’t 15. ___ the woman. 

Surprisingly, the female subject said she hadn’t 15. ___ of anything at all that night or, that she couldn’t remember anyway.

Directed dreaming

The Pharaoh (see the extract from Genesis in the previous post) asked for help. It was Joseph who explained – or, shall I say, interpreted – the dream for him. That’s how the Pharaoh became sure that his dream was the premonition of the seven bad years to come. How much of a myth does the story contain?
Yet again, what do you think you could achieve by becoming a directed dreamer?

1.      research	2.     particular interest	3.     directed dreaming	4.     waking up	5.     going back
6.     directed dreamers	7.     control	8.     completely	9.     regular	10.  reliable
11.   communicating with	12.  pub	13.  talk to	14.  had had	15.   seen