Trying hard not to think about an old love? Don't be surprised if he stampedes through your dreams like the proverbial elephant. When subjects were told to avoid thinking about a certain someone before falling asleep, they were more likely to dream of that person than subjects asked to purposefully keep someone in mind. And, whereas Freud believed only desirable targets would assert themselves in dreams, subjects dreamed just as often of people to whom they were not attracted as they did of attractive targets.
"Things we sweep under the rug fill our minds while we dream," says Daniel Wegner, lead researcher and professor of psychology at Harvard University, which explains why smokers trying to quit, for example, tend to dream about lighting up. The study pokes holes in a popular theory that says dreaming is the brain's way of interpreting random activations. "This proves that some dreams are not random; they do come from prior content—particularly content you're trying to block out," he says.
