It is known that most (all?) people remember few of their dreams. The dreams I remember include no people known to me & no locations known to me. I often dream about high school & college experiences as well as work experiences. The high schools & colleges in my dreams do not resemble any that I attended, visited, or were included in waking conversations. Similarly, the job experiences take place in firms unlike any at which I actually worked & my duties are not like any of the jobs I had when awake. Perhaps some dreams I do not remember include familiar people or places. Is this different from the dream scenarios of most people or is it some what common?
Yes. while I have many of dreams featuring my humble self, often I am not the 'me' of the waking world at all. I can be other people and be in other situations that are nothing like my own waking life. What I find extraordinary is that there are whole casts of characters who I know the entire history of, (and the casts change nightly and are never the same that I have noticed) and that these 'worlds' are quite mundane - just some family somewhere doing ordinary things for the most part.
My dreams tend to be mostly realistically possible and with me as the "experiencers" of the things that happen in them. Often I am the only person interacting with the world but not infrequently there are one or two others active in the dream. Usually in this case they occupy a role, more than are specific person from my past. For example I have had two wifes and there may be "my wife" in the dream, but not a copy of either. What is most strange, is that my dreams must be a story construced at some deeper level than the dream is. For example I of the dream can be hearing a joke and be surprised by the "punch line." The "deeper level" knew what it was when strating to tell it to the level I of the dream was in. Also I of the dream get unexpected, but valid, consequences that reasonably follow from the chain of events in the dream. I think real history is sometimes transformed in the dream. I owned land at the end of a dead end road and had had a minor boundary dispute with owner of adjoining land many years ago. But In one recent dream my land was along the top of a T-shaped road and an extension of that road would have been only on my land. One day when I went to the land in the dream I saw the neighbor had made a split rail fence correctly in a straight line on the boundary except for near the top of the T. There his fence curved over onto my land with the last fence pole exactly in the middle of where an straight extension of the stem of the T road would go. We got into big argument over this. He offered to move the end of the fence far from the T road on to his land, giving me twice as much of his land as he had taken of mine. He explained that it was a real "pain in the ass" to make first a right hand turn then only 15 feet later a 90 degree left hand turn to enter into his drive way. This was near the end of the dream - my point is that in the deep level this POV of his must have been known long before it was told to me in the dream. Most of my dreams are sort of like that, plausible behavior of people happens, possible physical events do too and I of the dream don't know how things are going to develop, but that deep level must, and is just telling me a story. I have many repeat dreams, but the derails differ. I had to work very hard in a special experimental 5-year progam at Cornell (They dropped it soon as more than half of the entering classes transferred out to easier 4-year programs) At least 50 times since graduating I have had what I refer to as my "anxiety dream." Typically I will have overslept must run to class for big exam or have gone to the wrong room for it, or it is just finishing as I arrive or it is open book and I was not told so had none, etc. etc. At the conscious level, I have no anxieties - Have more money than I can spend, a wife that loves me, children and grand children who are healthy and doing well, time to waste here, etc. Once when 2n wife's son ran out of gas in a sort of rough area, he was psychologically disturbed - afraid to leave the car, and wonder how I could be so calm, etc. willing to go down a small hill and ask for help. The young man I spoke with offered to use his motor bike to go get some gas for us which I of course over paid for with a "keep the change." But that "deep down" level that invents my dreams was permanently damaged by five years of tension - trying to keep my GPA above 85 so as not to lose my full needs scholarship which was tough as I graduated from the poor public schools of West Virginia, very unprepared for the grueling task before me. I was then very poor - washed dishes in a frat house for my meals - losing scholar ship meant going home.* * one term it looked like I might. The one hour ROTC credit instructor offered a grade of 100 if you could take apart the M-1 rifle, naming each piece as you did so, and then put it back together in 60 seconds while BLINDFOLDED. I borrowed one and practiced. I got the 100 grade and even though it was only about 4% of the 24 + 1 credit hours, it (and not being as bad off as I feared) got my GPA back to near my 90 average. Trick to doing that M-1 task is to have memorized exactly where on the table you will put each piece as you take it apart. (Any groping around for a part, and you lose.)
I can only recall three or four dreams in a year, but I dutifully write them down when I do. My experience is about the same as yours. There are never any people from real life: no family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, not even musicians or TV/movie stars. Ditto for the locations: nothing I recognize from real life.
