Evans, Christopher

In his book Landscapes of the Night, Dr Evans puts forward a new theory of dreaming. He states that our brain has ‘programs’ for dealing with survival. We have basic behaviour programs for walking and talking, rather like a computer might have. We also have programs for social interaction and skills. In the different roles such as lover, parent, breadwinner, employer, we need such different skills. But also, to deal with our own process of change, our internal urges, anger, drive to succeed, we also need learned skills to handle them well. A person who doesn’t handle anxiety or stress can easily fail in work or in relationships, despite being highly intelligent. Many people do not enter a relationship because of the problems it poses. Dr Evans suggests that dreams are the means by which we both practice and update our programs of survival. Our experience of the day may question or enhance our behaviour stratagems for work success or relationship. Without the reprogramming occurring in dreams we would be stuck at one level of behavioural maturity. ‘As we gain in experience, as our input gets richer and more diverse, we modify our programs rather than replace them with a completely fresh set.’