Sublime

We’re talking about what psychologists today would describe as the “adaptive unconscious.” Timothy Wilson, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, has described this in his important book Strangers to Ourselves (a very Augustinian title!). Over the past twenty years psychology has come to appreciate the overwhelming influence of “nonconscious

Humbly, we humans have. Sleep, especially REM sleep and the act of dreaming, is a tenable, yet underappreciated, factor underlying many elements that form our unique human ingenuity and accomplishments, just as much as language or tool use (indeed, there is even evidence that sleep causally shapes both these latter traits as well).

The Wayward Mind by Guy Claxton.

without sleep, our brain reverts to a primitive pattern of uncontrolled reactivity. We produce unmetered, inappropriate emotional reactions, and are unable to place events into a broader or considered context.