Why is it that we share a dream symbolism?  Why do the dreams of other people sound so much like our own that we can imagine ourselves there?  Often, as the more absurd elements of a dream are related, we laugh and chuckle.. but always a tad self-consciously.  We know we have had dreams as strange, or stranger, and we know that there are meanings hidden from us by our waking mind.

            Jung leapt from the common elements of dream to the idea of a collective unconscious -- a "race memory" somehow shared by every human being.  A genetic legacy, perhaps, or a metaphysical communion.  No plausible physical mechanism was offered -- that's the advantage of being a psychologist instead of a biologist -- but, he argued, the mere fact of universality argues that something must be going on.

            It might not be that complicated, of course.  As argued by the modern Darwinists, we are products of our genetic heritage.  The basic shape of our brain, molded by our common evolution, is remarkably similar across populations; so perhaps it is not surprising that the mental tools utilized by those brains are shared, too.  In other words, we each create a "natural dream vocabulary" that tends to be similar, so that dreams resonate between people.  Once we have the language to express dreams, we will share them and thus whittle the potential toolbox to a collection of shared symbols, whose personal edges have perhaps been made smooth by commingling.

            Why is it we like to tell dreams?  Usually, the weirder and the more disturbing, the more we tell and the more that we want to hear.  I have noted, upon relating even a strange dream, a release of psychic pressure.  What is it about dreams that make them effective conveyers of meaning, effecting techniques of literature?  Humanity is a story-telling species, among other things, and of course dreams are stories.   Is that why they evolved?  Is a dream the brain telling itself a story, satisfying some hardwired need?

            Can we explain dreams from a materialist, Darwinian perspective?  Or are dreams our point of contact with the transcendent?