Ibn Sīnā’s Account of Dreams and Imagination

Record summary

Ibn Sīnā’s psychology, especially discussions connected with the soul, imagination, sleep, and dreaming, offers a major medieval framework for altered consciousness. It is valuable for comparing naturalistic, philosophical, and religious explanations of extraordinary cognition without treating the author as a modern parapsychologist. Relevant material is distributed across works and Arabic manuscript traditions, with later Latin translations influencing European reception. Exact passages and terminology should be checked in critical editions because “dream,” imagination, and prophecy are not interchangeable categories.