"The function of dreams, they tell us, is to unlearn or purge the brain of unneeded connections—according to this view what goes through the mind in a dream is merely the result of a sort of neural housecleaning.  They also suggest that it may be damaging to recall dreams, because doing so might strengthen mental connections that should be discarded.  'We dream in order to forget,' they write." —William Burroughs, The Western Lands