解开梦境之谜 Dreaming of Nonsense: the Evolutionary 1)Enigma of Dream Content
2010年的热门大片《盗梦空间》将“梦”这个元素发挥到了极致，也掀起了一股“解梦”的热潮。
我们对未知的领域总有一种异样的执着，就像梦境。那些在梦中出现的楼梯，走廊，会说话的猪等等形象让人不解，令人困惑。精神分析大师弗洛伊德的“性原力说”把梦中的意象归为“未得到纾解的欲望的反映”，而仅靠这一学说来解释梦境并不能令人信服。于是，诸多理论涌现，有些看似匪夷所思，但是却又不无道理。你不能在这里得到一个确切的答案，就像《盗梦空间》片尾的那个转动的陀螺一样——它到底有没有停下？
文字难度：★★★
Loading up the 2)trunk of my car with clothes hangers when approached by two 3)transients…try to engage them in good-natured conversation about the benefits of wooden clothes hangers over metal ones, but they make me uneasy, say they want to go out to get a drink but I've got to go.
我把衣架装上我的车尾箱的时候，两个路人走了过来……我试着和他们友善交谈，说一下木衣架比铁衣架更优越，但是他们让我觉得有点不自在，他们说想出去喝一杯，可是我却要走了。
Saturday, 4:47 a.m.: Was just now trying to return my dead grandmother's cane to her. Took elevator to her apartment…meant to go to the 8th floor, but elevator 4)lurched up to the 18th floor, swung around violently then shot back down.
星期六凌晨4点47分：刚刚试着把拐杖还给我已去世的奶奶。乘搭电梯去她的公寓……本来打算上到了8楼的，但是电梯突然冲到18楼，一阵剧烈摇晃之后猛地往下掉。
Sunday, 5:02 a.m.: On a 5)floating barge in the sea trying to get to some other country, just made it, the dogs are running all over the place but seem more like 6)rodents.
星期天凌晨5点02分：在海上乘着一艘浮力驳船到国外去，刚抵达就看见到处都是狗，可是这些狗看上去更像是一些啮齿类动物。
These are dreams, of course. Mine from the past few days, to be precise—and they are totally absurd. Why on earth do our minds 7)conjure up such ridiculous imagery, such 8)inane thoughts, such spectacularly vivid and surreal landscapes, intense emotions—such 9)narrative trash? Harvard University psychologist Deirdre Barrett might have some answers for us. Recently Barrett 10)shrugs off the better-known 11)psychoanalytic theories of dreams (for example, 12)Freud's “wish fulfillment” and 13)Jungian 14)archetypes) as being 15)irreconcilable with a Darwinian framework and instead highlights the major contemporary, biologically informed theories. So here's a 16)snapshot of the current evolutionary contenders in the field of dream studies:
以上所述当然都只是梦。准确来说，是我过去几天里做过的梦——它们都很荒谬。到底为什么我们的大脑会虚构出如此荒唐的幻象，如此毫无意义的意象，如此精细逼真、超现实的景色，以及强烈的情感——如此无聊的一段段故事碎片？哈佛大学的心理学家黛迪尔·巴瑞特或许可以为我们作出一些解答。最近，巴瑞特抛开那些更为著名的梦境精神分析理论（如弗洛伊德的“愿望实现”学说和荣格的“原型”），认为这些理论与达尔文的基本学说相矛盾，而且突出强调了那些基于生物学的当代主要理论。以下段落是现今梦研究领域中的一些进化派理论：
Brain Conditioning
大脑调节理论
In the 1960s, sleep researchers began to notice that, in contrast to other stages of sleep, the brain was especially active during 17)REM (rapid eyes movement) sleep. Several researchers argued that the adaptive purpose of dreaming may therefore be primarily to stimulate the brain or to keep it “in shape” during prolonged periods of inactivity. In general, the brain conditioning theories don't place much, if any, emphasis on dream content. As psychologist Steven Pinker writes, “For all we know, dreaming might be a kind of screen saver in which it doesn't really matter what the content is as long as certain parts of the brain are active.”
在二十世纪六十年代，睡眠研究人员开始留意到，与其他睡眠阶段相比，大脑在眼球快速运动睡眠阶段尤其活跃。因此，几位研究人员认为，做梦的调节性目的主要是为了在较长的人体静止期间使大脑处于兴奋状态或者保持其“良好状态”。总之，大脑调节理论并没有过多强调梦的内容。正如心理学家史迪芬·平克所写的：“我们所知道的只是梦就像一种屏幕保护，只要它使大脑的某些部分处于活跃状态就行了，屏保展现的内容并不重要。”
External 18)Vigilance
外界警觉理论
Don Symons wasn't entirely satisfied by brain conditioning theories of dreaming, in large part because these theories didn't really19)crack the question of why dreams have such a specific sensory profile of being so vividly visual while comparatively 20)impoverished in sound, smell and other sensory domains. Symons points out sleepers are particularly vulnerable to real-world threats and hazards in their external environment, and so they must unconsciously monitor their environment with specific senses.
唐·西蒙斯并不完全信服大脑调节理论，主要是因为这些理论没有真正地解开一个难题：为什么梦境给人的视觉感受如此具体和逼真，而听觉、嗅觉和其他感官感受在梦境中却又相对较弱？西蒙斯指出，睡着的人特别容易受到外界的真实威胁和危害的影响，所以他们潜意识里要留着某些感官来监视外界环境。