Interobject

Interobject

An interobject is a phenomenon of dreams, in which there is a perception of something that is “between” two objects. The term was coined by Blechner in his book "The Dream Frontier." Interobjects differ from typical dream condensations in which two objects are fused into one. Instead the condensation is incomplete. Some examples from the literature on dreams include “a piece of hardware, something like the lock of a door or perhaps a pair of paint-frozen hinges,” [Hobson, J. A. (1988) "The Dreaming Brain." New York: Basic Books.] and “something between a record-player and a balance scale.” [ Meltzer, D. (1984) "Dream-Life." Perthshire, UK: Clunie Press.] Interobjects are new creations derived from partially-fused blends of other objects.

Interobjects, like disjunctive cognitions, would sound bizarre or psychotic as perceptions in waking life, but are accepted by most people as commonplace in dreams. They have implications for both the theory of dreaming and the theory of categorization. Interobjects show the dreaming mind grouping items together whose connection may not be apparent to the waking mind. “Something between an aqueduct or a swimming-pool” [States, B. (1995) Dreaming “accidentally” of Harold Pinter: The interplay of metaphor and metonymy in dreams. "Dreaming", 5:229-245] reveals the category of “large man-made architectural objects that contain water.” “Something between a cellphone and a baby” [Blechner, M. (2005) The grammar of irrationality: What psychoanalytic dream study can tell us about the brain. "Contemporary Psychoanalysis", 41: 203-221.] reveals a category combining a relatively new piece of technology and a live infant: both make noise when you don’t expect it, both are held close to your body, and both can give you a feeling of connectedness.

We do not know if interobjects occur only in dreamlife or may occur as unconscious categorizations during waking life. Freud [Freud, S. (1900) "The Interpretation of Dreams". New York: Viking.] called interobjects “intermediate and composite structures.” He thought they were inferior mental constructions and were scrupulously avoided in waking life.

Most adults tend to regularize interobjects when discussing them in waking life. Children are better able to sustain interobjects in their original form. A child told his father a dream in which he was in trouble at sea and “a seal swam up to them. They thought it was just a seal, but then they looked and under the water it was a whole boat, it was huge, so they climbed onto the seal/boat, and it brought them to the shore of the mainland.” When the boy told his father the dream in the morning, the father, speaking like an adult who cannot tolerate contradictions, said to him: “So really, it was a boat, a big, safe boat.” The child, holding fast to the integrity of his dream, said, “It was a boat, but it was still a big, friendly seal.” This child had not yet learned to regularize his perceptions to fit the way the world works. Adults may learn to reject interobjects in waking life, but still retain them in their dreams.

Interobjects may have an elementary function in human thought. By transgressing the normal mental categories described by Eleanor Rosch, interobjects may be the origin of new ideas that would be harder to come by using only fully-formed, secondary process formations. They may be one example of “Oneiric Darwinism” [Blechner, M. (2001) "The Dream Frontier." Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.] in which new thought-mutations are created during dream-life and rejected or retained in waking life depending on their usefulness.

Interobjects have been used creatively in advertising. A set of rules, known as a “Replacement template,” enabled a computer to create interobjects:

“Given a product (P) with a trait (T), the subject is asked to come up with a creative idea for an ad that conveys the message that P has T. In a visual format, an object S (symbol), which is universally identified with T, is replaced with P. The effect is enhanced if S is placed in a situation in which T is essential. Moreover, the replacement operation can be iterated: Rather than P one can use parts of it, or aspects of it, or objects associated with it, to replace the corresponding elements associated with S.” [Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999) Creative sparks. "Science", 285:1495-1496.] When asked to produce an ad for the World Tennis Cup tournament in Jerusalem, the computer generated a mosque with a dome that had a tennis ball texture. In advertising on-time performance for an airline, the computer generated a cuckoo-clock in which a jumbo jet pops out of the clock instead of a cuckoo. Both of these creations – the mosque/tennis ball and the jumbo jet/cuckoo clock – are interobjects.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Eleanor Rosch — (once known as Eleanor Rosch Heider [See footnote at Rosch, E.H., Natural Categories , Cognitive Psychology, Vol.4, No.3, (May 1973), p.328.] ) is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in cognitive… …   Wikipedia

  • Disjunctive cognition — is a common phenomenon in dreams, first identified by psychoanalyst Mark Blechner [1], in which two aspects of cognition do not match each other. The dreamer is aware of the disjunction, yet that does not prevent it from remaining. The most… …   Wikipedia

  • Mark J. Blechner — (born 1950, in Manhattan, New York) is an American psychologist and psychoanalyst. He has developed and researched new ideas in a number of areas: dreams, gender and sexuality, HIV/AIDS, psychotherapy and the interface between neuroscience and… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”