I am writing to you because I have had what appear to me extraordinary dreams for 15 years which may interest you as a researcher in this field. I heard your interview on NPR Wednesday, August 4th, and you seemed to be both level-headed and prone neither to Freudian nor the other varieties of nonsense that currently pass for professional analyses of human dreaming.

I have an advantage as an observer of mental phenomena in that I have had a lifelong interest in the history of the methods of science, and therefor am less prone to the superstitions and magical thinking that are commonplace among even educated people in our society (not to mention the subtler sorts of superstititions and magical thinking to which the average industrial and academic researcher is susceptible).

These dreams have in common the appearance of my former lover Paul Rosenfels, who died in 1985. Their intensity is certainly related to Paul's overriding importance in my life, not only up to that point, but even extending up to the present moment. This extraordinary impact is due to two factors: 1) as a psychotherapist, Paul was able to "save" me at a very perilous moment in my young life, becoming thereafter the father I never had, and 2) as a philosopher, Paul is considered by many psychologists around the world as having made a unique contribution to the foundations of a future "science of human nature" (Hume's historic phrase), and many of his students have rallied around me to see that his revolutionary work is continued.

I usually have only vague memories of these dreams upon awakening. However, sometimes I awake in the middle of one — either because of some external stimulus, or because the dream itself is so disturbing — and then I clearly remember it. I think the most amazing feature of these dreams, to me as a layman at least, is the crystal clarity of what I see and hear. When I am in the dream I see Paul and his apartment with apparently the same level of detail as I did in real life. (I have heard of "eidetic imagery" before, but always thought it merely a fraudulent claim of shamans and mystics, akin, say, to "psychokinesis.") It is only when I am coming out of the dream that the details of, for example, Paul's face become blurred. Today as I write this and think of Paul, for example, I can only visualize a blurred image. I need to look at a photograph of him to remember the actual "small print."

It is astounding to me to know that the brain records details of familiar faces with such clarity and accuracy. What possible use can this serve, given that the same clarity is barred from our waking consciousness? The only answer I can come up with is that this kind of memory is used subconsciously when recognizing people, but that it is too "expensive" (in terms of brain resources) to make such full memories available to consciousness. In terms of evolutionary theory, recognition of the familiar is, after all, 1) a critically important survival skill in a world where an unfamiliar individual may suddenly murder you, and 2) apparently instantaneous, since none of us is ever aware of the transition from non-recognition to recognition.

There is a second feature of these dreams that amazes me, and that is that I sometimes have dreams within dreams. For this human capability I can offer no simple evolutionary hypothesis. There are sharp boundaries between the dream levels, too; it's not as if there is a smooth continuum from one level to the next. A typical sequence is 1) I am in Paul's apartment talking to him when I remember that he died in 1985 and therefor I must be dreaming, 2) I try to awake because I don't want to be trapped in a dream, 3) I awake only to find myself again in Paul's apartment, perhaps in a different room, 4) I get really alarmed and really wake up, usually with my heart palpatating.

I don't talk about these dreams to anyone, and you can well imagine why. Most people, even educated people, love to overinterpret dreams and I don't suffer fools well. If my mother had had similar dreams, for example, I'm sure she would have run to her friends and bragged about being haunted by a ghost. I am not haunted by a ghost, Dr. Hobson, but it is clear that Paul is very alive within me in a way that is hard to talk about without provoking superstitions so ancient as to perhaps be hard-wired within us.

I would be glad to discuss these experiences with you, or to provide more information if you like. Many times upon awakening I have written down a narrative of these dreams in my diary, and I could forward transcripts of these to you.

But perhaps these dreams are not unusual at all and you have heard accounts of many similar ones. In that case would you please refer me to something I could read that would help me understand at a scientific level how — and perhaps why — these dreams occur?