Memory and Sex
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
(Adapted from a passage in my novel Beyond the Fourth Door.)
“Dreams are important for memory. They’re part of the mechanism for translating short-term into long-term memory. Short-term memory is electrical while long-term is chemical. Often the elderly can remember events from their childhood but can’t remember where they just put their keys. Short-term memory gets filled up, like a blackboard so covered with chalk that there’s no way to distinguish anything new written on it. The elderly lose the ability to transfer recent information to long-term memory and hence cannot clean the short-term slate.
“That’s where my theory strays from conventional knowledge. I believe that the mechanism for that transfer is triggered by sexual stimulation.
“Freud made a big deal about the connection between dreams and sexual fantasy. He presumed that sex is the be-all and end-all, at the center of our creative activity. I put the emphasis on memory instead. We dream not to fulfill unconscious sexual desires, but rather to renew our memory so we can continue to function as productive human beings. There’s a connection between erotic dreams and the mechanism of memory translation. We dream about sex not because sex is important, but because memory is important. Sexual arousal triggers a set of events that puts our short-term memories into long-term form and then erases the short-term slate so it’s ready to record new experiences.
“Other mammals have brief periods when they are in heat and can conceive. Adult humans are perpetually subject to sexual stimulation and sexual dreams, even after they can no longer procreate. That’s because sexual stimulation is part of the mechanism for renewing memory. And memory, rather than sex, is the primary human drive. My hypothesis could lead to research that might alleviate or cure memory problems of the elderly.”
