Interobject

Some examples from the literature on dreams include "a piece of hardware, something like the lock of a door or perhaps a pair of paint-frozen hinges"[1] and "something between a record player and a balance scale.

Interobjects, like disjunctive cognitions, which would seem bizarre if encountered in waking life, are accepted by most people as commonplace in dreams.

"Something between a cellphone and a baby"[4] shows a category combining a relatively new piece of technology and a live infant: both make noise when you don't expect it, are held close to your body, and can give you a feeling of connectedness.

By transgressing the normal mental categories described by Eleanor Rosch, interobjects may be the origin of new ideas that would be harder to come by using only fully formed, secondary process formations.

The woman who dreamed of a "cellphone baby" was creating a new category: small objects held close to the body and making noise at surprising and embarrassing times.

A set of rules, known as a "Replacement template," enabled a computer to create interobjects: "Given a product (P) with a trait (T), the subject is asked to come up with a creative idea for an ad that conveys the message that P has T. In a visual format, an object S (symbol), universally identified with T, is replaced with P. The effect is enhanced if S is placed in a situation where T is essential.

In advertising on-time performance for an airline, the computer generated a cuckoo-clock in which a jumbo jet pops out of the clock instead of a cuckoo.