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Dreams that work: The relation of dream incorporation to adaptation to stressful events
Abstract
Conducted sleep studies of 49 Ss going through divorce, 23 women and 26 men, at the time of the initial break-up and 1 yr later. 31 of these were diagnosed as depressed on a combined criterion of meeting the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) and a Beck Depression score above 14, and 18 met neither criterion. The depressed and nondepressed Ss did not differ in Dream-like Fantasy, but did in Affect Strength and type. Depressed Ss who incorporated the ex-spouse into their dreams at the time of the break-up were significantly less depressed and significantly better adjusted to their new life at the follow-up point than Ss who did not. These dreams were rated as having stronger affect. Persons who are depressed during a stressful time in their lives, who dream with strong feelings, and who incorporate the stressor directly into their dreams appear to "work through" their depression more successfully than those who do not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... By contrast, psychological and evolutionary theories about dreaming (e.g., Cartwright, 1991;Franklin & Zyphur, 2005;Kramer, 2006;Revonsuo, 2000;Walker, 2017) argue that the specification of the functions that neurophysiological mechanisms serve during sleep does not constitute a specification of the function that the realization of dreams serves (Revonsuo, 2000, p. 878). ...
... As previously noted, psychological and evolutionary models of dreaming (e.g., Cartwright, 1991;Cartwright, Young, Mercer, & 5 Several studies suggest that external raters tend to overstimate the presence of negative emotions in dreams, while when it is the dreamer who assesses the emotional content of her/his dreams, more positive emotions are reported (Schredl & Doll, 1998;Sikka, Valli, Virta, & Revonsuo, 2014). In any case, the emotional intensity of waking life experiences influences their incorporation into the dreams, such as the emotional intensity of a dream influences its probability to be remembered. ...
... The psychologist and sleep-researcher Rosalind Cartwright (1991Cartwright ( , 1996Cartwright ( , 2010Cartwright & Lamberg, 2000;Cartwright et al., 1998) empirically investigated the dreams of depressed divorced patients. She proposed that dreams act as natural healers; they attempt to balance our emotional lives by modulating the disturbing emotions stirred up by those waking experiences that threaten the present organization of our identity. ...
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the meaning and functions of dreams according to control-mastery theory (CMT), a cognitive-dynamic relational theory developed and empirically validated
in the last 40 years by the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group (Gazzillo, 2016; Silberschatz, 2005; Weiss, 1993a; Weiss, Sampson, & the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group,
1986). CMT stresses how dreams reflect the person’s efforts to adapt to reality; their production is regulated by a safety principle and is an expression of human unconscious higher adaptive functions.
According to this model, dreams represent our unconscious attempts to find solutions to emotionally relevant problems. In dreams people think about their main concerns, particularly those concerns
that they have been unable to solve by conscious thought alone, and they try to develop and test plans and policies for dealing with them. After having introduced the reader to the main concepts of CMT,
we will illustrate the different facets of the CMT model of dreams with several clinical examples.
Finally, we will describe the core elements of recently developed models of dream functions and meanings based on empirical research on sleep and dreams, and we will show their substantial
compatibility with hypotheses proposed by CMT.
... Diğer sorular "Psikopatolojiler ile rüya yaşantıları nasıl değişir?" ve "Rüyalar ile psikopatolojiler arasında içerik bağlantıları var mıdır?" sorularıdır. Öte yandan psikopatolojisi olan bireylerin rüya temaları, rüya geri çağırma/hatırlama (dream recall) frekansları ve detaylandırma düzeyinin sağlıklı bireylere göre farklılaştığı da bilinmektedir (Armitage, Rochlen, Fitch, Trivedi ve Rush, 1995;Beck ve Ward, 1961;Cartwright, 1991;Dudek-Soffer, Shalev, Shiber, ve Shahar, 2011;Gackenbach, Sample, Mandel ve Tomashewsky, 2011;Genç, Koçak, Çelikel ve Başol, 2013;Hadjez, Stein, Gabbay, Brucker, Meged, Barak, Elizur, Weizman ve Rotenberg, 2003;Hill, Gelso, Gerstenblith, Chui, Pudasaini, Burgerd, Baumann ve Huang, 2013;Hinton, Field, Nickerson, Braynt ve Simon, 2013;Khodarahimi, 2009;King ve Decicco, 2007;Schredl ve Hildegard, 2001;Kron ve Brosh, 2003). ...
... Rüya temalarının psikopatolojilere göre farklılaştığını bildiren çalışmalar da bulunmaktadır (Armitage ve ark., 1995;Beck ve Ward 1961;Cartwright, 1991;Gackenbach ve ark., 2011;Hadjez ve ark., 2003;Hinton ve ark., 2013;Khodarahimi, 2009;Kron ve Brosh, 2003). Depresif bireylerin rüya temalarının incelendiği çalışmalarda antidepresan tedavileri ile depresif bireylerin rüyalarının duygusal içeriğinin de değiştiği belirtilmektedir (Armitage ve ark., 1995). ...
... Depresif bireylerin rüya temalarının incelendiği çalışmalarda antidepresan tedavileri ile depresif bireylerin rüyalarının duygusal içeriğinin de değiştiği belirtilmektedir (Armitage ve ark., 1995). Boşanma sonrası depresyon tanısı almış bireylerin rüya içeriği ve iyileşme sürecinin incelendiği bir çalışmada, depresif dönemlerde depresyonu tetikleyen stres olayları(boşanma süreci) ya da boşanılan eş ile ilgili daha sık rüya gören depresif bireylerin periyodik aralıklarla alınan depresyon ve uyum puanlarının, söz konusu içerikte daha az rüya gören depresif bireylere göre daha hızlı iyileşmeye işaret ettiği gözlenmiştir (Cartwright, 1991). Başka bir deyişle depresif dönemlerde depresyonu tetikleyen stres olayları ile ilgili rüya içeriğinin iyileşme sürecini hızlandırıcı işlev taşıdığı söylenebilir. ...
Mystery of dreams has been discussed as a phenomenon worth to solve and has attracted the attention of many professions including psychology for centuries. Even though studies trying to explore dreams have followed a path from speculations to scientific explanations; dreams still keep being a phenomenon which is subjected to researches by remaining its mystery at the present time. The aim of the present study is to point out the position of dream works in the psychology. In other words, it is to inform about history, material and method of dreams in psychology researches. In this context, firstly the notion of sleep in which the dreams occur and relationship between sleep and dream was discussed. After then, fundamentals and new age researches about dreams’ psychological history, functions, relations with psychopathologies, as well as its contents and themes, dream recall, interpretation and dream works in psychotherapy were included in this study. Key words: Dreams, dream works, dreams and psychopathology, dream themes, dream recall
... It is, however, worth noting that dreams also have a strong potential for coping with the experienced trauma and can also fulfil an adaptive role (Cohen & Cox, 1975;Breger et al., 1971;Cartwright, 1991). Much of what we dream about are the "residuals of the day" -derivatives of the experiences underwent earlier in the waking state (Draaisma, 2012). ...
... Therefore, the conclusion can be drawn that camp dreams, to a certain extent "include" stressful experiences in their content. According to the results of research among others by Cohen & Cox (1975);Breger et al., (1971), or Cartwright (1991, such "inclusion" of stressful events in dream content may have an adaptive nature (contribute to improving affect, reducing the probability of depression appearing or the development of PTSD). This is an interesting perspective for own research but more in depth analyses are called for in order to ascertain whether or not this is also true in this case, too. ...
The research aim was to gain a more thorough understanding of the experiences by former prisoners of the trauma of the time spent in a Nazi concentration camp and reworking it by dreaming. The material comprised 117 written accounts obtained by psychiatrist Stanisław Kłodziński in the 1970s from 38 former Polish national prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau (17 women and 21 men). A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the narratives was carried out and two types of dreams were compared in terms of chosen characteristics: camp and post-camp dreams. Camp experiences and a negative emotional tone occurred significantly more often in post-camp dreams. The “beauty” and “symbolicity” categories were present significantly more frequently in camp dreams. It was found that motives related to the time spent in the camp appeared persistently in dreams. This was accompanied by a negative affect and lack of symbolicity typical of PTSD nightmares.
... According to the so-called emotion regulation theories of dreaming, the function of dreams is to (re)process and regulate affect (Cartwright, 1991(Cartwright, , 2010Kramer, 1991Kramer, , 1993Hartmann, 1996Hartmann, , 2011Levin and Nielsen, 2007;Perogamvros and Schwartz, 2012;Malinowski and Horton, 2015). Despite some variation in the specifics of these theories, they all agree that dreams incorporate and reprocess the memories of affective experiences of the waking life, integrate them with existing memory elements, to ultimately downregulate their intensity and thus help us cope better with these experiences during wakefulness. ...
... To date, most research has focused on the relationship between dream affect and (post-sleep) waking affect level. Whereas some earlier studies supported emotion regulation theories of dreaming, demonstrating that negatively valenced dreams are associated with more positively valenced postsleep affect (e.g., Cohen and Cox, 1975) or better coping with adverse life experiences (e.g., Cartwright, 1991Cartwright, , 2010, more recent studies lend greater support for the continuity theories, reporting positive correlations between dream affect and postsleep affect (e.g., Schredl and Doll, 1998;Yu, 2007;Mallett et al., 2021;Barbeau et al., 2022a). Importantly, studies directly testing the affect regulation function of dreaming have often failed to find evidence for the affect regulation function (e.g., De Koninck and Koulack, 1975;Tousignant et al., 2022). ...
There is increasing evidence that sleep plays an important role in affective processing. However, it is unclear whether dreaming-the subjective experiences we have during sleep-also serves an affect regulation function. Here, we investigated the within-person relationship between negative affect experienced in dreams and next-day waking affect level, affect reactivity, and affect regulation. For 5 days, 40 participants reported their dreams and rated their dream affect and post-sleep waking affect level upon morning awakening. Thereafter, they performed an affect reactivity and regulation task which involved viewing neutral and negative pictures with the instruction either to simply view the pictures or to down-regulate the affect evoked by these pictures. Multilevel regression analyses showed that the more negative affect people experienced in their dreams at night, the more negative affect and the less positive affect they reported the next morning. However, negative dream affect was associated neither with affect reactivity to the pictures nor with the ability to down-regulate negative affect in response to these pictures. In fact, Bayesian analyses favored the null hypotheses. These findings fail to provide support for the affect regulation function of dreaming and, instead, speak for affective continuity between dreaming and post-sleep wakefulness.
... Psychological theories of dream function argue that dreaming is psychologically adaptive: dreaming helps individuals cope better with waking life and hence influences their mental health and well-being. Several different emotion processing and emotion regulation theories have been put forward (Cartwright, 1991(Cartwright, , 2010Hartmann, 1996Hartmann, , 2011Kramer, 1991Kramer, , 1993Kramer, , 2007Malinowski & Horton, 2015;Perogamvros & Schwartz, 2012). As the name implies, these theories assign a central role to affect in the function of dreaming. ...
... Most of the emotion regulation theories attribute a special role to negative affect: dreams specifically incorporate negative affective experiences (e.g., fear) and the processing of negative affect in dreams helps to downregulate it (Cartwright, 1991(Cartwright, , 2010Hartmann, 1996Hartmann, , 2011. Other theories propose that affective intensity, rather than affective valence, determines what is incorporated into dreams and that dreams downregulate affective intensity in general (irrespective of positive or negative valence) (Kramer, 1991(Kramer, , 1993(Kramer, , 2007Malinowski & Horton, 2015). ...
We experience affect—emotions and mood—not only when we are awake but also during dreaming. Despite considerable research, existing theories and empirical findings disagree about the frequency, nature, and correlates of dream affect. In this thesis, I discuss the conceptual and methodological issues that underlie these discrepancies. I present five empirical studies, the overall aim of which was to investigate the phenomenology and correlates of dream affect and how results regarding these are influenced by study methodology. Studies I–III focused specifically on methodological issues, by comparing self- and external ratings of dream affect (Studies I–II) or the affective content of home and laboratory dream reports (Study III). Studies IV and V investigated the waking well-being and neural correlates of dream affect, respectively. These studies show that results and conclusions regarding dream affect are very different, even contradictory, depending on whether dream reports have been collected using sleep laboratory awakenings or home dream diaries (Study III) or whether dream affect has been measured using self- or external ratings (Studies I–II). Self- and external ratings of dream affect are also differently correlated with waking well-being (Study IV). Together, these results caution against making broad generalizations about affective dream experiences from findings obtained with one type of methodology only. The studies
also demonstrate that dream affect is related to aspects of waking well-being and illbeing(Study IV) and that certain affective states experienced in dreams, specifically anger, rely on similar neural processes as in wakefulness (Study V). These findings suggest that the phenomenology and neural correlates of affective experiences are, at least to some extent, continuous across sleep and wakefulness. Overall, this thesis shows how the conceptual and methodological issues in the study of dream affect may limit the validity, generalizability, and replicability of findings and, consequently, pose challenges to theory building and theory testing. It contributes to dream research by highlighting the need, and suggesting ways, to enhance the conceptual clarity and methodological rigour of research on dream affect. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the thesis, the theoretical discussion and novel empirical findings also have implications for emotion research, sleep research, well-being research, consciousness research, and affective neuroscience.
... So, it seems that sleep time is the most appropriate time to regulate emotions. According to the model of the function of emotional regulation of dream, if patients experience the negative experiences in awaking time as negative emotions in a dream, they can deal with these emotions more easily (29,30). Another finding suggested that increased anxiety and anger and hypertension are related to the negative content. ...
... Regarding the previous reports which indicated that there is a relationship between psychological disorders and emotional content of the dream (4, 6, 7), it is suggested that negative emotional content of dream probably is a reflex of the developmental process of the psychopathology of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and anger after diagnosis of cardiac disease (4,6). Obviously, psychological and psychiatric symptoms manifest in patients after stabilised cardiac disease and regarding poor strategies of emotional regulation (28), the dreams with negative emotional content are responsible for emotional regulation (29). Despite this issue, lack of early treatment of anger and anxiety after a cardiac event may disrupt the quality of sleep (31,32) so the possibility of emotional regulation will be destroyed even during sleep. ...
Introduction:
Dream, as a kind of mental activity, includes various functions such as mood regulation, adjustment and integration of new information with the available memory system. The study was done for assessing the relationship between physiological and psychological components of cardiac diseases with emotionally negative dreams in cardiac rehabilitation.
Methods:
At the baseline of this cross-sectional study, 156 patients from Western Iran participated during April-November 2016. People 20 years-80 years able to recall the emotional content of dreams after cardiac surgery entered the study. The Beck depression inventory (BDI), Beck anxiety inventory (BAI), Buss and Perry's aggression questionnaire (BPAQ) and Schredl's dream emotions manual were used for collecting data. A binary logistic regression analysis used for the study of the relationship between risk factors and emotionally negative dreams.
Results:
The mean age of participants was 59 (SD = 9) years (men: 64.1%). The results showed that 25% of patients have negative emotional content. After adjustment for demographic variables, the results showed that increased anxiety [adjusted odds ratio (adj OR) = 1.08 [1.01-1.16], P = 0.020] and anger (adj OR = 1.03 [1.00-1.06], P = 0.024) and hypertension (adj OR = 2.71 [1.10-6.68], P = 0.030) can predict the dreams with negative content significantly.
Conclusion:
The increasing rates of anxiety and anger and history of hypertension are related to increasing dreams with the negative emotional load. The control of risk factors of dreams with negative emotional load can be the target of future interventions.
... [21] Hence, individuals who have lesser worries about outcomes of disease probably experience dreams with positive emotions. In the present study, most [24,25] However, why the women's dream is sadder compared to men is probably due to the experience of depression. The studies in the field of psychological outcomes of cardiac diseases indicate that women experience depression more than men. ...
... It is possible that this mechanism is effective in primary adjustment with sad of real-life events. [24,25] Another finding indicated that depression and especially anxiety are predictors for increasing rate of perceived dream and emotionally negative dreams. According to this finding, the past reports suggest that recall of dream, duration of dream, and content of dream can be a reflection of developing a process of the psychopathology of psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. ...
Background:
The assessment of a dream and its mechanisms and functions may help us to percept cognitions, emotions, and complex behaviors of patients. Hence, the present study aimed to assess (i) the rate of perceived dream and its emotional load and content and (ii) the relationship between functions of dream with anxiety and depression.
Methods:
In this cross-sectional study, 167 cardiac patients who had undergone rehabilitation in the western part of Iran were assessed during May-October 2016. Research instrument included Beck depression inventory, Beck anxiety inventory, Schredl's dream emotions manual, and content analysis of dreams manual. The findings were analyzed through Pearson's correlative coefficient and multiple regression analysis.
Results:
The mean age of participants (66.5% men) was 59.1 ± 9 years. The results indicated that the emotional content of patients' dreams included happiness (49.1%), distress (43.1%), sad (13.8%), fear (13.2%), and anger (3%). Although women report more sad dreams than men (P = 0.026), there was no difference between them in terms of other components of dreams, anxiety, and depression. Regression models showed that anxiety and depression were significantly able to predict perceived dream rates (P = 0.030) and emotionally negative dreams (P = 0.019).
Conclusion:
The increased rates of depression, especially anxiety, are related to increasing perceived dreams with negative and harmful emotional load. Regarding severity and negative content of dreams are reflexes of stressful emotional daily experiences, the management of experienced psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety is concerned as an undeniable necessity.
... Freeman and White (2002) underlined the importance of dream work in forming dysfunctional automatic negative thoughts and indicated that these thoughts affect dream themes. As can be understood from all these studies, this topic has been analyzed via depression instead of direct associations between dream themes and dysfunctional attitudes (Armitage, Rochlen, Fitch, Trivedi, & Rush, 1995;Barrett & Loeffler, 1992;Beck & Ward, 1961;Cartwright, 1991;Kron & Brosh, 2003; This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. ...
... In other studies, it is indicated that depressive individuals' emotional dream contents change with antidepressant treatments; in addition to this, disturbing dream contents about stressors that trigger depression have more of an accelerator function than other contents. It is also stated that depressive individuals experience dreams themed anxious and/or unpleasant more frequently than nondepressive individuals (Armitage et al., 1995;Cartwright, 1991;Kron & Brosh, 2003). Beck and Ward (1961) stated that severe depressive individuals' dream themes have more masochistic components than those of nondepressive individuals. ...
The aim of the study was to investigate the psychological processes pointed out by dream contents and themes. For this purpose, a model that indicates mediation roles of interpersonal relationship style and dysfunctional attitudes, on the relationship between immature and neurotic defense mechanisms and disturbing dream themes in addition to direct relationship between these defense mechanisms and disturbing dream themes, was examined. The sample included 610 adults within the age range of 18 to 65. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated that the proposed model fitted the values for a good model and explained 22% of the variance. Considering that the research focused on dream processes is limited in the literature, this research plays a crucial role in providing important information on the issue.
... Using this new approach, we are able to test whether emotional WLEs are still preferentially incorporated into dream reports when trivial WLEs are taken into account and to investigate the emotionality and significance of WLEs incorporated into dreams as a function of their remoteness. The results will be discussed regarding previous literature and current hypotheses about dream function, notably those attributing a role to dreaming in emotion regulation [27,28] and memory consolidation [29][30][31]. ...
... A current mainstream hypothesis proposes that dreams participate in emotional regulation, through an active moderation of waking life affects [27,28,[37][38][39]. If so, one may expect 1) that dreams incorporate more emotional experiences than non-emotional experiences, 2) that the majority of incorporated WLEs have a negative valence, 3) that the most negative WLEs incorporated into dream date from recently before the dream. ...
Several studies have demonstrated that dream content is related to the waking life of the dreamer. However, the characteristics of the memory sources incorporated into dreams are still unclear. We designed a new protocol to investigate remote memories and memories of trivial experiences, both relatively unexplored in dream content until now. Upon awakening, for 7 days, participants identified the waking life elements (WLEs) related to their dream content and characterized them and their dream content on several scales to assess notably emotional valence. Thanks to this procedure, they could report WLEs from the whole lifespan, and mundane ones before they had been forgotten. Participants (N = 40, 14 males, age = 25.2 ± 7.6) reported 6.2 ± 2.0 dreams on average. For each participant, 83.4% ± 17.8 of the dream reports were related to one or more WLEs. Among all the WLEs incorporated into dreams dated by the participants (79.3 ± 19%), 40.2 ± 30% happened the day before the dream, 26.1 ± 26% the month before (the day before excluded), 15.8 ± 21% the year before the dream (the month before excluded), and 17.9 ± 24% happened more than one year before the dream. As could be expected from previous studies, the majority of the WLEs incorporated into dreams were scored as important by the dreamers. However, this was not true for incorporated WLEs dating from the day before the dream. In agreement with Freud’s observations, the majority of the day residues were scored as mundane. Finally, for both positive and negative WLEs incorporated into dreams, the dreamt version of the WLE was rated as emotionally less intense than the original WLE. This result, showing that dreams tend to attenuate the emotional tone of waking-life memories towards a more neutral one, argues in favor of the emotional regulation hypothesis of dreaming.
... The difference, and sometimes opposition, between emotions at different levels of the dream construction also implies that nightmares as well can play the emotionally positive role of dreaming. Indeed, an adaptive view of dream functions has been supported by studies of dreams in specific stressful situations (Breger et al., 1971;Cartwright, 1991;Hartmann, 1996). The nodes represent the sources and the arcs represent the conceptual/emotional links between pairs of sources. ...
The article describes a model of how our brain constructs a dream and what functions are involved in this construction. The model is based on phenomenological data, reported in the literature, obtained by experimental research focused on the relationship between the dream experience and events in the dreamer’s waking life. The Dream-Building System is described as a cascade of two sub-systems. The first (the Retrieving Sub-System) performs the function of retrieving, from among the memory contents in the dreamer’s mind, those specific memories that are appropriate for the construction of a dream. The output of this sub-system, i.e., a Cluster of Dream Sources, is the input of the Plot-Building Sub-System, which creates the serial plot of the Dream Experience by transforming its distributed input (i.e., the output of the Retrieving Sub-System) into a serial output. Both sub-systems perform complex functions that require a high level of creative unconscious “intelligence”. Issues regarding typical dreams, underlying emotions, symbolism, condensation, creativity, and bizarreness are discussed in the light of the proposed model.
... It is thus not surprising that traumatic events and major life changes have also been found to have a significant impact on dream content. Events, such as divorce (Cartwright, 1991), sexual and physical abuse (Belicki and Cuddy, 1991), and torture and war (Lavie and Kaminer, 1991;Valli et al., 2006) have been shown to have a significant impact on emotions in the content dreams of individuals who have experienced these events. Results from more recent studies examining the impacts of COVID-19 on dreams demonstrate that individuals who were more strongly affected by the pandemic physically, socially, or psychologically had more negatively toned dreams (Schredl and Bulkeley, 2020). ...
Dreams may contribute to psychological adaptation by aiding in mood regulation. One way it could be achieved is through a desensitization process whereby negative events are replayed within the dream under lower conditions of negative emotionality. Evidence of this theory is supported by the tendency of dreamers to evaluate their emotions felt in their dreams more positively compared to an independent judge (i.e., positivity bias). Additionally, it has been observed that while dream emotions are typically more negative than pre-sleep emotions, morning emotions are more positive, suggesting that emotional regulation occurs overnight and may help improve mood in the morning. The present study aimed to examine the relationships between pre-sleep, dream, and morning mood and the potential desensitization function of remembered dreams as indicated by their effects on morning mood and stress.
Methodology: Participants ( N = 188; Mean age = 19.2, SD = 3.0) recorded their dreams ( N = 345 dreams) and self-reported their stress and mood at bedtime, during their dream retrospectively, and upon waking. A judge also evaluated the subjects’ dream moods. Subjects’ positivity bias was defined as the difference between the subjects and the judge’s evaluation of the positive emotions in the dream.
Results: A MANOVA revealed that subjects perceived a higher level of positive emotions in their dreams compared to a judge. Multi-group path analysis revealed that some relationships between pre-sleep, dream, and morning emotions and stress differed in positive and negative dream nights. In both groups, the strongest predictors of morning mood and stress were pre-sleep mood and stress, respectively. The second strongest predictor of positive morning mood was the subjects’ dream positivity bias.
Conclusion: Results provide some support for the association of dreaming in mood regulation attributable to REM sleep. They also highlight that pathways implicated in mood regulation may be distinct from stress regulation.
... They found that those participants who subsequently dreamt of the failure experience felt better about it and were more likely to retry the task. On the working-through emotion regulation literature Cartwright (1991Cartwright ( , 1996 found depressed divorcees who dreamt more of their ex-spouse and children in an emotional manner better adapted to the new situation at one-year follow-up. ...
Every night during sleep we experience an immersive world of dreams, woven together by our sleeping brain unbound by external stimulation. Despite considerable effort the question of why we dream has eluded a conclusive answer. Understanding dreams also arguably makes progress toward answering the broader question of consciousness: why do we experience anything at all? I attempt to illuminate these questions by concentrating on the quintessentially social nature of dreams. First, in Study I a novel theoretical accountthe Social Simulation Theory of dreaming (SST)is proposed, together with the first outlines of a research program for its empirical study. SST suggests the world simulation form of dreams provides clues for its function by preferentially simulating certain kinds of scenariosnamely social interactions. Second, in Studies II and III specific hypotheses derived from the SST in Study I are empirically evaluated. These provide evidence for dreams to contain more social content than corresponding waking life and to remain so even when social interactions are removed from waking life (Sociality Bias). Furthermore, the Strengthening Hypothesis that suggests dreams serve to maintain and/or increase social bonding with close others gains partial support. The Practise and Preparation Hypothesis gained support as dreams simulated positive interactions in one fifth of dream interactions and overall simulate complex social behaviours. The Compensation Hypothesis suggests dreams simulations to increase when waking social contacts are abolished, but this was not supported in the data as dream sociality remained stable despite social seclusion. When excluded from others our dreams reconfigure to decrease simulations of interactions with strangers. However, dreams during normal day-to-day life do not preferentially simulate bond-strengthening interactions with close others. In opposition to previous findings, Study II found no differences in social dream contents between either stage of sleep or time of night. In Study III a short social seclusion showed not only differences in dream content, but also in sleep structure, with an increase in REM sleep. Third, methodological development was undertaken by, both, developing a content analysis method for extracting social episodes in narrative reports (Social Content Scale, SCS; Study II), and by assessing the validity of a novel home sleep monitor device, the Beddit Sleep Tracker (BST). While the SCS proved useful for categorizing the social features in both studies II and III, BST failed to provide accurate sleep data as measured against a polysomnogram. Overall, the development of SST and the initial empirical evidence for some of its hypotheses brings us closer to understanding the twin problems of dreaming and consciousness.
... This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. (Cartwright, 1991(Cartwright, , 2010Hartmann, 2011;Malinowski & Horton, 2014). Our second hypothesis concerned gender differences in the conducted analyses. ...
Beginning in March 2020, the Italian population was subjected to a lockdown lasting approximately three months, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency. Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of dream data, the current study aimed at exploring the effects of social isolation and the lockdown on Italian people’s dreams, focusing on content and dominating emotions. An online survey was administered to 598 participants, aged 18–70 years (M = 30.9; SD = 10.9). In the survey, participants were asked to: (a) write down two dreams they had during the lockdown and (b) provide data on demographic and socio-economic factors; sleep quality before and after lockdown; and levels of anxiety, depression, and rumination. Questions also explored participants’ perceived fear of contagion, dream recall frequency, and dream vividness. Participants’ dream transcripts revealed a majority of negative emotions—particularly fear/fright/terror and anxiety/anguish/preoccupation. Moreover, several themes emerged from the content analysis, including relationships, the human and natural environment, and COVID-19. The results deepen our understanding of the dominant dream emotions of people experiencing a collective stressful event, such as the social isolation necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the findings support the continuity hypothesis, which holds that dreams tend to reflect the emotional concerns of the dreamer and help to integrate intense or disruptive emotions experienced during waking life.
... It appears that one of the main functions of dreaming is to increase the dreamer's capacity to process emotion, by elaborating on stressful experiences and psychic conflicts. Psychoanalytic authors such as Winfred Bion (1992), Philip Bromberg (2006), and Ernst Hartmann (2011) as well as neuroscientists such as Rosalind Cartwright (1991Cartwright ( , 2010 and Mark Solms (2000) have suggested that dreaming allows the integration into memory of emotions experienced during waking life, reducing the impact of strong disruptive feelings attached to traumatic events. In a similar vein, Malinowski and Horton (2014) provide evidence that dreams might facilitate 'mastery' over affect and memories, helping the dreamer to gain control over the events of waking life. ...
... Finding meaning in dreams (Domhoff, 1996;Hall & Van De Castle, 1966) and uncovering their particular functions (Bulkeley, 2018;Dement, 1974;Domhoff & Schneider, 2018;Hartmann, 2010;Hobson et al., 1998;Levin & Nielsen, 2009) have been flourishing avenues of contemporary dream research. In the last decades, research has unraveled many ways in which dreams may contribute to waking life, for instance, by promoting emotion regulation (Cartwright, 1991(Cartwright, , 2010Cartwright et al., 2006;Hartmann, 1996;Kramer, 1993Kramer, , 2014, emotional memory consolidation (Smith, 2019), and interpersonal adjustment (Nielsen et al., 2004). More specifically, McNamara (1996;Zborowski & McNamara, 1998) suggested that dreams promote attachment relationships. ...
Based on the attachment promotion hypothesis of dreaming, this study explored the wake-to-dreamcontinuity of youths’ attachment representations and earlymaladaptive schemas. A total of 19 children and adolescents (12 boys;M= 11.8 years, SD = 2.1) were administered the Child Attachment Interview and completed the self-reported
Schema Inventory for Children. They were provided a digital audio recorder to report their dreams for 14 consecutive days. Data from95 dreams (M = 5 per participant, SD=2.6) were collected. Dream coding systems were developed to assess attachment- and schema-related content. Bootstrapped correlations were conducted between waking
scores and the highest dream-derived scores. In addition, a cluster analysis of dreams—with a subsequent inclusion of the waking scores—was conducted for each participant. The results showed that security-related waking scores were linked to insecurity-related
dreaming scores (dismissingness). Conversely, insecurity-related waking scores (dismissingness) were negatively linked to security-related dreaming scores. Security-related waking scores accounted significantly for the merging of the waking attachment profile
to a cluster of dreams. No wake-to-dream association was found for attachment-related schemas (Disconnection and Rejection domain). Because dreams depict more insecure than secure attachment-related content, they may function to rehearse different attachment
strategies. However, attachment security showed wake-to-dream continuity through cluster analysis, which might be a way to consolidate, in addition to a way to test or improve, attachment representations in childhood and adolescence. Implications
for the hypothesized dream functions of attachment promotion, emotion regulation, and threat simulation are discussed.
... In any case, tow ards the end of the 1980s, w hile H obson's neuro-biological model dominated and the psychologists of dream decided to abandon the study of the m otivational aspects of dream , very few authors continued to pay attention to Freud's dream model. In this climate, one clearly against the mainstream trend was Rosalind Cartwright, who, with her interesting studies on the influence of em otional aspects on dream ing, dealt w ith aspects considered decidedly "out" in the scientific community (e.g., Cartwright, 1991;Cartwright, Lloyd, Knight, & Trenholme, 1984). ...
... Titus and Speed [19]). Less consequential examples include the effect of dreams on adaptation to stressful events such as divorce [20] or bereavement [21]. ...
Previous laboratory research has shown that exposure to odours of contrasting pleasantness during sleep differentially affects the emotional tone of dreams. In the present study, we sought to investigate how a generally pleasant (vanillin) and unpleasant (thioglycolic acid, TGA) smell influenced various dream characteristics, dream emotions and post-sleep core affect during all-night exposure, controlling for appraisal of the olfactory environment during the assessments and sleep stage from which the participants woke up. We expected that exposure to vanillin would result in more pleasant dreams, more positive and less negative dream emotions, and more positive post-sleep core affect compared to the control condition, whereas exposure to TGA would have the opposite effect. Sixty healthy volunteers (37 males, mean age 23 ± 4 years) were invited to visit the sleep laboratory three times in weekly intervals. The first visit served to adapt the participants to the laboratory environment. On the second visit half the participants were exposed to odour (vanillin or TGA, 1:1) and the other half to the odourless control condition. On the third visit, they received control or exposure in a balanced order. On each visit, the participants woke up twice, first from the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage and then in the morning, mostly from non-REM. Repeated measures were taken upon each awakening of dream pleasantness, emotional charge of the dream, positive and negative emotions experienced in the dream, and four dimensions of post-sleep core affect (valence, activation, pleasant activation – unpleasant deactivation, and unpleasant activation – pleasant deactivation). We found a small effect of condition (exposure vs. control) in interaction with appraisal on the ambient olfactory environment on dream pleasantness. Specifically, false alarms (i.e., perceiving odour in the absence of the target stimulus) were associated with lesser dream pleasantness than correct rejections. Although exposure had a statistically significant positive influence on post-sleep core affect (namely, valence, activation, and pleasant activation – unpleasant activation), the size of the effect was small and lacked practical significance. The hypothesised differential effects of vanillin and TGA were only modelled for dream ratings because they decreased the fit of the other models. Neither dream pleasantness nor emotionality differed according to the odour used for stimulation. The results of the present study suggest that all-night exposure to odours is unlikely to produce practically significant positive effects on dreams and post-sleep core affect.
... Overnight while we dream we are remade, soothed by adaptation to stress (Wassing et al., 2019) and molded by consolidation of memory (Spencer, Walker & Stickgold, 2017). There is some scientific support suggesting that our nightly dreams can be a source of overnight therapy (Cartwright, 1991), memory strengthening (Wamsley et al., 2010), or even creative inspiration (Barrett, 2017)-yet more experiments and more induction protocols are needed to explore the benefits of dreams in depth. Without reliable ways to control dream content, the study of the active role of dreams in conferring sleep-related benefits has been largely stagnant. ...
... Dream content was reported to reflect the depressed state as well as the circumstances of the individual, especially in patients who attempted suicide or had gone through divorce (Firth et al., 1986;Cartwright, 1991). ...
While modern psychology considers dreams to be the royal road inwards into one’s preoccupations, intrapsychic conflicts, and unconscious, Muslims have additionally viewed dreams to be a royal road outward into the realm of spiritual inspiration and prophecy. Despite the significance attributed to dreams in both worldviews, dreams have been an endangered species in the mainstream practice of psychiatry and clinical psychology. In an attempt to address this gap in clinical practice, the authors provide a foundational account on the study of dreams in Islamic the literature and intellectual heritage. The authors will also shed light on the profound tradition of dream interpretation (ʿilm al-taʿbīr) established by Muslim scholars. Following this theoretical foundation, the authors will discuss clinical applications of dreamwork within an Islamically integrated model of psychotherapy. The clinical tools provided for clinicians in this chapter include a toolkit for dream interpretation, utilization of ‘healing dreams’ in practice, navigating through nightmares, understanding the connection between dreams and istikhārah, providing psychoeducation about dreams, and understanding the connection between dreams, psychopathology, and psychopharmacology.
... For instance, increased appearances of family characters, including the deceased, was found in dreams of complicated grief sufferers (Germain et al. 2013). Similarly, dream incorporation of an ex-spouse and related emotions, following divorce, is associated with better psychological adaptation six to 12 months later (Cartwright 1991;Cartwright et al. 2006). Our finding of a high prevalence of abandonment/instability in dreams, as opposed to its low waking-life intensity level in the present sample, suggests that dreaming of abandonment may help down-regulate this core fear so that symptoms remain under the clinical threshold. ...
The goals of this study were to develop and assess the reliability of a dream coding system of early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) and modes, to explore whether self versus other dream characters express different EMSs and modes, and to explore cross-state (waking to dreaming) correspondence of EMSs. One hundred and forty-one women completed an online questionnaire that included an adapted version of the Young Schema Questionnaire – Short Form 3 (YSQ-S3) and their most recent dream report. A scoring system was developed based on schema therapy and applied to dreams by four independent judges. Inter-rater reliability ranged from moderate to excellent. There was a differential incorporation of EMSs according to dream characters; self appeared significantly more deprived and weak (e.g., abandoned and abused) and in a vulnerable child mode, whereas others rather expressed grandiosity in an impulsive child mode. Cross-state correspondence was observed for the abandonment/instability EMS. More precisely, the abandonment/instability score on the questionnaire predicted the presence of the analogous EMS in the most recent dream (OR = 1.61). This study provides preliminary evidence that a dream coding system of EMSs can be reliably applied by minimally trained coders. Dreamwork may be a useful addition to guided imagery in schema therapy and appears especially well suited for intervention with adults who fear abandonment. © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
... Quite a few researchers have postulated that dreaming provides a facilitating milieu whereby adversity and emotional preoccupations are worked through (Cartwright, 1986(Cartwright, , 1991(Cartwright, , 1996(Cartwright, , 2010Cartwright, Agargun, Kirkby, & Friedman, 2006;Cartwright, Baehr, Kirkby, Pandi-Perumal, & Kabat, 2003;Cartwright, Luten, Young, Mercer, & Bears, 1998;Cartwright, Newell, & Mercer, 2001;Kramer, 1991Kramer, , 1993Kramer & Barasch, 2000;Kramer, Roth, Arand, & Bonnet, 1981;Kramer, Whitman, Baldridge, & Lansky, 1964;Levin, Fireman, & Nielsen, 2010;Levin & Nielsen, 2009;Perogamvros & Schwartz, 2012;Walker & van der Helm, 2009; Arriving too late, e.g., missing a train, a bus, etc. 13 ...
Themes involving ego-centered concerns—such as performing very badly or failing at something, being blamed or punished, and blaming something on someone—are common in dreams. This study examined the extent to which dream themes characteristic of ego-centered concerns could be accounted for by Taoist orientation, with consideration of self-perceived adversity and locus of control. The sample contained 242 participants, 111 university students and 131 nonstudent participants. Participants’ incidence of dreaming of ego-centered concerns, Taoist orientation, and locus of control was measured using the Dream Motif Scale; the Ego-Grasping Orientation Scale; and the Internality, Powerful Others, and Chance Scales, respectively. The results suggest that the incidence of dreaming of ego-centered concerns is associated positively with the experience of chronic adversity and negatively with Taoist orientation. In addition, people who have left school, as compared with students, are more Taoist-oriented and are more inclined toward an internal locus of control. It seems that cultivating a Taoist lifestyle may help mitigate psychological distress springing from the ego-dominated perspective.
... However, implementation of virtual characters extends beyond the realm of combat and violence to more general dramatic structures with potential benefits for the person (Laurel, 1991;Rheingold, 1991;Tart, 1990). As progress is made in understanding how dreamed social interactions facilitate emotional adaptation (e.g., Cartwright, 1991), cyberspace scenarios modeled upon such interactions might serve as useful adjuncts to dreambased psychotherapy or counselling (e.g., Cartwright, Tipton & Wicklund, 1980;Evans, 1990;Levay & Weissberg, 1979;Olsson, 1991). We could envision dream-like cyber narratives for purposes as diverse as facilitating insight to the personal meaning of dreams in healthy subjects to aiding traumatized individuals deal with tormenting nightmares. ...
As arousing as cyberspace may appear, many of its experiential qualities suggest that it is a dreamlike state. Very often cyberspace and dreaming both seem vividly real, even though this reality is only virtual. The existential similarity between cyberspace and dreaming realities is complex and largely unstudied, but its exploration could have profound implications for the future development of research in both domains. This paper investigates some qualities of virtual experience which characterize both cyberspace and dreaming, it proposes some concepts for understanding their similarity, and it discusses some of the potential implications a oneiric approach to virtual reality experience may have both for the development of cyberspace narratives and for our understanding of dream function.
... Other dream researchers have suggested that dreaming serves an emotion regulation function, which has implications for psychological health (Cartwright, 1991). Even dreams that are emotionally negative may serve to regulate mental health if they address current concerns from waking life. ...
The current study examined how attitudes toward dreams, as well as an appraisal of typical emotions experienced in dreams, predicted greater subjective well-being. Participants completed a measure of attitude and beliefs about dreams, and appraised their positive and negative dream affect in an average dream. Additionally, participants completed measures of typical daily affect (positive and negative) along with life satisfaction, as measures of subjective well-being. Results showed that having a positive attitude toward dreams was associated with life satisfaction and positive waking affect, and that these associations were fully mediated by a high ratio of positive to negative emotional appraisal for dreams. This emotional positivity bias in dream recall was the link between positive attitudes toward dreams and psychological health. Results remained significant while controlling for other variables related to the experience of dreaming (emotional intensity and recall/frequency). Implications for subjective well-being are discussed.
... Presleep affective state modulates dream emotions; stressful life situations often appear together with dysphoric dreams or even nightmares (Schredl, Fricke-Oerkermann, Mitschke, Wiater, & Lehmkuhl, 2009;Schredl, 2003). There is a growing body of evidence that even specific dream contents have a role in evening to morning mood improvement (Kramer, 1993) and in long term emotional adjustment in a stressful life situation (R. D. Cartwright, 1991). ...
Introduction: Although REM sleep plays an important role in neural maturation,
developmental aspects of dream research are relatively neglected compared to studies
focusing on adults. Adult research found that REM sleep and dreams take certain roles in
emotional adaptation, including the processing of emotional events, consolidation of
emotional memories and the downregulation of reactions to dysphoric stimuli. These
findings, however, are rarely discussed in a developmental perspective.
Aims: We aim to test the neurocognitive dream theory developed by Nielsen and Levine
(2007) by investigating the associations among abilities of waking emotional processing,
behavioral manifestations of emotional problems and the emotional aspects of dreaming
in children.
Methods: We analyzed 349 dream reports of 40 children between the ages of 4 to 8 years.
Dream emotions, emotional dream quality and the dreams’ effect on daytime’s mood
were self-reported by the children. Wakeful emotional processing is measured by the
Emotional Stroop Test for children, and emotional–behavioral problems were assessed by
the parent version of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).
Results: Results show that negative dream quality and the dreams’ effect on daytime mood
are associated with negative emotional adaptation measured by the SDQ (τ = .25, p = .031,
τ = .24, p = .041 respectively). Children with more emotional problems reported more
dreams (τ = .32, p = .004). Interestingly, we could not find relationship between dream
emotions and waking emotional development measures.
Conclusion: Results support psychological models of dreaming assuming a role of dreams
in emotional regulation and provide partial support for the plausibility of Levin and
Nielsen’s neurocognitive theory in a developmental context. Further studies on emotional
development and dreaming are needed to gain more insight in the generalizability of the
connection between emotional processing during wakeful functioning and REM sleep.
Keywords: dreams, child, emotional development, Emotional Stroop, dream emotions,
neurocognitive dream-theory
... Although research to date does not clarify whether dream recall or dreaming per se serves a mental health function (cf. Cartwright, 1991), results to date are at least compatible with the notion that remembering dreams is an immediate response to current psychological distress that serves a long-term adaptive role in processing emotional information, solving problems, and integrating painful experiences (Breger, Hunter, & Lane, 1971;Hartmann, 1995). Accordingly, in the present study, it was expected that frequent dream recall would be associated with poor psychological adjustment, especially among children exposed to recurrent and severe traumatic events. ...
This study examined whether the repression, mood congruent memory, and salience models would explain the frequency of diary recorded dream recall in two groups, one repeatedly exposed to trauma and the other living in relatively peaceful circumstances. The trauma group included 268 Palestinian children and adolescents living in a politically violent area in Gaza; the comparison group included 144 children and adolescents living in a peaceful area in Galilee. In general, the more children were exposed to trauma, the more frequently they recalled their dreams: the trauma group reported more dreams than the comparison group, and, within the trauma group, children who were repeatedly exposed to traumatic events recalled more dreams than those exposed to fewer trauma. Of the three models of dream recall, two were supported. First, salient (i.e., bizarre, vivid, emotional, active, and narratively coherent) dreams were more frequently recalled, and, second those in which the dream mood (atmosphere and feeling) was congruent with waking mood were more frequently recalled. However; contrary to expectations, repressive coping strategies (e.g., paralysis, denial, numbing, and distraction) were associated: with more frequent dream recall. Moreover; although, in general, dream recall was correlated with problems in psychological adjustment, the relationship was symptom specific: frequent dream recall shielded children from somatic and anxiety symptoms but made them more susceptible to depressive symptoms.
... This observation reinforces the notion that emotions rather than complex cognitive operation prevail in dreams (Hartmann, 2008 Looking at the potential long-term impact of remembered dreams on psychological adaptation (F3.2), there are some indications that incorporation of preoccupations or conflicts may have a positive value. Cartwright (1992) observed in a group of women who had experienced a divorce that those who were frequently incorporating their ex-partner in their dreams were those better adapting to the divorce. The design of the study could not determine, however, if the incorporations were adaptive or simply a reflection of the adaptation. ...
Dreams have fascinated humans from the earliest of times. Yet modern research is still struggling to understand the nature and functions of dreaming. It has been observed that sleep mentation tends to be in continuity with waking mentation but that the memory sources of dreams are significantly transformed into new expressions of past experience and current concerns. Some dreams are creative and useful. Dreams can also be used to increase self-knowledge or as complement in psychotherapy. Negative emotions prevail in dreams and can culminate in nightmares. Fortunately, dreams can be controlled by suggestion, imagery rehearsal, and lucid dreaming. Electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies suggest that the unique features of dreaming are due to the fact that key brain structures are activated and interact differently in REM sleep than in waking. While many dream function theories have been proposed, more rigorous scientific research is needed to determine whether dreaming by itself serves an adaptive function.
... Many clinical psycho-physiologic experiments (Palombo 1973(Palombo , 1978Greenberg and Pearlman 1974 ;Greenberg et al. 1990 ;Cartwright 1977Cartwright , 1991 proved to be highly productive in a different way: Their fi ndings reveal correspondences between qualitative and cognitive aspects of dream content and the emotional problems that confronted the dreamer in broad time frames that encompass stressful life problems from the past and the present. These correspondences further emphasize the role of memory and emotion in the dream process. ...
Fischmann presents an interdisciplinary combination of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, in which she focuses on different approaches towards dreams, the dreaming mind, and the brain from a psychoanalytical, neuropsychoanalytical and neurobiological stance. The current FRED study continues to investigate changes in brain functions in chronically depressed patients after long-term therapies, looking for multi-modal neurobiological changes in the course of psychotherapy. Data from both neurobiology and psychoanalysis suggest that emotionally meaningful life experiences are encoded in memory by sensory percepts. These encoded memories will then recur in dreams. Therefore, dreaming can no longer be considered as random and meaningless. The author further links dreams and unconscious fantasies with epigenetics. The fact that epigenetic regulation, that is, chromatin remodeling in neurons, not only occurs in the developing brain but also in the mature, fully differentiated brain, raises questions about psychodynamic interactions in the developing mind that we are just now beginning to understand.
... Interestingly, severely depressed people reportedly have poorer dream recall and more blunted dream affect (Armitage, Hudson, Trivedi, & Rush, 1995) than those who have less severe depression. Females, especially depressed females, report higher rates of unpleasant dreams and nightmares than other psychiatric patients or healthy subjects (Cartwright, 1991;McNamara, 2008). If depression is indeed a disorder involving too much REM, then, theoretically, deprivation of REM should improve mood. ...
Nightmares are frightening dreams that most often occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Up to 50% of children between 3 and 6 years of age and 20% between 6 and 12 years of age experience frequent nightmares, and 2-6% of the American adult population experiences nightmares at least once a week. Nightmares typically appear during one of the late REM episodes that occur during the early morning period between 4 and 7 a.m., and these episodes are associated with heightened activation levels in the amygdala. Nightmare content typically involves extreme anxiety, fear, or terror and simulates physical threat to the dreamer by animals, strangers, or supernatural beings or monsters. Recurrent nightmares occur frequently in recurrent nightmare disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, REM behavior disorder, and other neuropsychiatric syndromes. Nightmares may be due, in part, to dysfunction in the normal mood regulatory functions of REM sleep.
... Whilst the disproportionately high presence of negative emotions have been demonstrated in a large sample of dreams (Hall and Van de Castle, 1966), systematically sampled and self-rated dream reports indicate that emotions in dreams are more varied and balanced (Schredl and Doll, 1998;Sikka et al., 2014); however, the TST may still apply to the subset of dreams that represent threat and fear emotions. Cartwright (2011), on the basis of her extensive work with divorced individuals (e.g., Cartwright et al., 1984Cartwright et al., , 2001Cartwright et al., , 2006Cartwright, 1991), also proposed an emotion-regulation function of dreaming. She proposed that if we experience negative wakinglife experiences and dream of those experiences in specific ways, such as with negative emotions and with time variance (dreams set in the past, present, and future), then we are more likely to show improvement on coping with those experiences than if we do not dream of them or dream of them in the wrong way, such as with neutral emotions or without time variance (dreams set exclusively in the past). ...
In this paper we propose an emotion assimilation function of sleep and dreaming. We offer explanations both for the mechanisms by which waking-life memories are initially selected for processing during sleep, and for the mechanisms by which those memories are subsequently transformed during sleep. We propose that emotions act as a marker for information to be selectively processed during sleep, including consolidation into long term memory structures and integration into pre-existing memory networks; that dreaming reflects these emotion assimilation processes; and that the associations between memory fragments activated during sleep give rise to measureable elements of dream metaphor and hyperassociativity. The latter are a direct reflection, and the phenomenological experience, of emotional memory assimilation processes occurring during sleep. While many theories previously have posited a role for emotion processing and/or emotional memory consolidation during sleep and dreaming, sleep theories often do not take enough account of important dream science data, yet dream research, when conducted systematically and under ideal conditions, can greatly enhance theorizing around the functions of sleep. Similarly, dream theories often fail to consider the implications of sleep-dependent memory research, which can augment our understanding of dream functioning. Here, we offer a synthesized view, taking detailed account of both sleep and dream data and theories. We draw on extensive literature from sleep and dream experiments and theories, including often-overlooked data from dream science which we believe reflects sleep phenomenology, to bring together important ideas and findings from both domains.
... Several authors assert that dreaming maintains psychological balance (Cartwright, 1991;Hartmann, 1995;Kramer, 1993). The idea is that dreaming is necessary to adjust to stressors in current waking life. ...
The present review gives an overview on common theories of dreaming with a specific emphasis on how
they are able to explain lucid dreaming. The theories are grouped either to such that describe structural or biological processes of dreams or to such that describe evolutionary and adaptive functions of dreams. This overview shows that none of the theories outlined is fully capable of explaining neither non-lucid dreaming nor lucid dreaming. With respect to the first group, the concept of “protoconsciousness” is the theory that at best explains lucid dreaming. With respect to theories with an evolutionary and adaptive function of dreams, those theories, that stress the problem solving or simulation functions of dreams are more suited to explain lucid dreaming. Further, aspects that induce or amplify lucidity and the neural mechanisms that may be involved in lucid dreaming are described.
... Several authors assert that dreaming maintains psychological balance (Cartwright, 1991;Hartmann, 1995;Kramer, 1993). The idea is that dreaming is necessary to adjust to stressors in current waking life. ...
The present review gives an overview on common theories of dreaming with a specific emphasis on how they are able to explain lucid dreaming. The theories are grouped either to such that describe structural or biological processes of dreams or to such that describe evolutionary and adaptive functions of dreams. This overview shows that
none of the theories outlined is fully capable of explaining neither non-lucid dreaming nor lucid dreaming. With respect to
the first group, the concept of “protoconsciousness” is the theory that at best explains lucid dreaming. With respect to theories with an evolutionary and adaptive function of dreams, those theories, that stress the problem solving or simulation functions of dreams are more suited to explain lucid dreaming. Further, aspects that induce or amplify lucidity and the neural mechanisms that may be involved in lucid dreaming are described.
The paper confronts psychoanalytic dream theories with the findings of empirical dream research. It summarizes the discussion in psychoanalysis around the function of dreams (e.g. as the guardian of sleep), wish-fullfilment or compensation, whether there is a difference between latent and manifest content, etc. In empirical dream research some of these questions have been investigated and the results can provide clarifications for psychoanalytic theorizing. The paper provides an overview of empirical dream research and its findings, as well as of clinical dream research in psychoanalysis, which was mainly conducted in German-speaking countries. The results are used to discuss the major questions in psychoanalytic dream theories and points out some developments in contemporary approaches which have been influenced by these insights. As a conclusion the paper attempts to formulate a revised theory of dreaming and its functions, which combines psychoanalytic thinking with research.
The topic of this research is "A Stylistic analysis of the Three Dreams in Earnest Hemingway's "The Old Man and The Sea." This research describes the stylistic analysis of the imageries and expressive means used in this novel to reveal the insides and the role of the hero through his dreams. These dreams represent the adjustments in the mind that are linked to sleep. The devices used along with the images and expressive means play a philosophical, sociological and psychological mirror of what is hidden inside the hero's mind and psyche and what is beyond the power of dreams in fiction. In this research, we introduce all the images, which demonstrate various symbols in the hero's life and in his hard society, which in turn characterize the individual style of the author. Dreams function effectively in simulating threats, handling both of the emotional and intellectual problems, and reinforcing memories for the author. Key words-a stylistic analysis of the three dreams in earnest hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea"
This article surveys some of the major milestones of scientific dream research, often in response to sleep research, as well as main points of exchange and disagreement with philosophy, with a focus on Western philosophy and non-lucid dreams. It argues that the increasing establishment of dreaming as a target phenomenon for the interdisciplinary study of consciousness, alongside recent advances in sleep and mind wandering research, is leading to revisions in our understanding of sleep, wakefulness, and consciousness.
This book has three parts. Part I develops a mimetic theory of dreaming. This chapter presents the theory and relates it to research on mimesis and on dreams in anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. It also overviews the book, introducing the reader to the Northwest cultural context, as well as describing my data and dialogic methodology. I interpret dreams in dialogue with subjects rather than treating them in the classic positivist sense as “objects of study.”
This study examined how subjective dream intensity and lucidity might be related to resilience and whether locus of control might mediate their potential relationship. The Lucidity and Consciousness in Dreams scale (LuCiD), Dream Intensity Scale (DIS), Resilience Assessment Questionnaire (RAQ), and Rotter’s Locus of Control Scale (LOC) were administered to 119 Hong Kong university students. The RAQ score was significantly indicated by the LuCiD and LOC scores, with the RAQ Problem-Solving subscale score being indicated by the DIS Dream Work subscale and LOC scores. The positive associations between the RAQ and the LuCiD and between the RAQ Problem-Solving and DIS Dream Work subscales were not mediated by the LOC. These findings suggest that internal locus of control does not account for the association between resilience and dream variables.
The mystery of the dream experience has been a historic preoccupation of mankind. There has been speculation about the source from which dreams originate and what their purpose may be. There were direct references to dreaming in the earliest written records: in texts like the Beatty papyrus from Egypt, the Gilgamesh legend from Mesopotamia, the Old and New Testaments, the Koran and the Indian sacred texts.1 The Greek physicians accepted and utilized the belief that dreams have a revelatory and a curative nature. Professional dream interpreters existed in the temples of Aesklepios, the Greek God of Healing. The dreams initially were healing without interpretation and later were interpreted on the basis of symbols that had a fixed meaning for all dreamers. In the second century AD Artemidorus of Daldis suggested interpretation of dreams should be based on the individual characteristics and circumstances of the dreamer.2 The earliest explanation of why dreams occur, similar for many other unexplained but intriguing events, including natural calamities such as earthquakes, was that supernatural forces, good or evil, caused them. Many of the world’s religions believed that dreams communicated the will of the Gods or God. This belief was so widespread that the early church fathers distinguished between dreams from above, from God, and dreams from below, from the devil.1 It was only in the 18th century that there was a shift from the explanation of dreaming as a supernatural process to that of it being a natural one. This shift was coincident with the general shift in the Western world to understanding the world in a more naturalistic or scientific manner.
The primary goal of the present research was to examine associations between sleep quality and the subjective experience of autobiographical events. In an online study, 141 university students reported on past events that varied by valence (positive or negative) and temporality (most significant or from the previous 2 weeks); they also completed measures of sleep quality and depression. Relative to participants with good sleep quality, participants with poor sleep quality thought more about their negative experiences, reported negative events that occurred more frequently, and used more negative emotion words when describing recent negative events. In some instances, depressive symptoms mediated the relation between sleep quality and elements of autobiographical reports. Future experimental work should examine the directionality of these effects, with the ultimate goal of improving sleep quality, mental health, and the manner in which individuals discuss and make meaning of their negative life events. Copyright
How typical are typical dream themes? If they occur frequently, recognizing these motifs may constitute a skeleton key for an interpretation of dreams. This article aims to 1) provide a review of research findings concerning the incidence and frequency of typical dream themes, 2) discuss how the neurostructural model of dreaming can explain some typical dream themes, and 3) propose a neuroscientific and statistical-based framework for making a possible sense of dream content. The pervasive nature of numerous dream themes is highlighted, the neuro-functional substrate of dreaming is discussed, and some directions for dream interpretation are presented.
Now that we are a few years beyond the “Decade of the Brain” (so proclaimed by the first President Bush in 1991), we can see how thoroughly the recent findings of brain–mind science have revolutionized our knowledge of human nature.Researchers have made astonishing discoveries about the workings of memory, language, vision, emotion, rationality, imagination, and many other basic features of psychological functioning. The implications of these findings are dramatic for many different fields of study, nowhere more so than in religious studies. Contemporary brain–mind science is giving us new insights into the evolved nature of our species, and this makes it directly relevant to the world’s religious traditions insofar as they seek a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.The time has long since come when the abundant discoveries of brain–mind science and the extensive history of human religiosity should be compared, evaluated, and, where possible, integrated.
The mental health function of dreaming was studied among Palestinian children and adolescents in a trauma group (N = 268) and a comparison (N = 144) group. The subjects were 6- to 15-year-old boys and girls, the mean age being 11.22 +/- 2.64. They used a seven-day dream diary to record the dreams they could recall every morning. The results suggest that compensatory dreams could moderate between trauma and psychological symptoms. Traumatic events were not associated with psychological symptoms among children whose dreams were bizarre, vivid and active, and involved joyful feelings and happy endings. A mediating model suggested that exposure to traumatic events was associated with mundane persecution and unpleasant repetitious dreams. These dysfunctional dreams were, in turn, associated with poor psychological adjustment. The dynamics of mastery and compensation dreams in traumatic conditions are discussed.
Self-ratings of dream experiences were obtained from 144 college women for 788 dreams, using the Subjective Experiences Rating Scale (SERS). Consistent with past studies, dreams were characterized by a greater prevalence of vision, audition, and movement than smell, touch, or taste, by both positive and negative emotion, and by a range of cognitive processes. A Principal Components Analysis of SERS ratings revealed ten subscales: four sensory, three affective, one cognitive, and two structural (events/actions, locations). Correlations (Pearson r) among subscale means showed a stronger relationship among the process-oriented features (sensory, cognitive, affective) than between the process-oriented and content-centered (structural) features-a pattern predicted from past research (e.g., Bulkeley & Kahan, 2008). Notably, cognition and positive emotion were associated with a greater number of other phenomenal features than was negative emotion; these findings are consistent with studies of the qualitative features of waking autobiographical memory (e.g., Fredrickson, 2001).
We spend so much of our lives sleeping, yet its precise function is unclear, in spite of our increasing understanding of the processes generating and maintaining sleep. We now know that sleep can be accompanied by periods of intense cerebral activity, yet only recently has experimental data started to provide us with some insights into the type of processing taking place in the brain as we sleep. There is now strong evidence that sleep plays a crucial role in learning and in the consolidation of memories. Once the preserve of psychoanalysts, ‘dreaming’ is now a topic of increasing interest amongst scientists. With research into sleep growing, this book presents a unique study of the relationship between sleep, learning, and memory. It brings together a team of international scientists researching sleep in both human and animal subjects.
The need to study dreaming is the promise that it will unlock the mystery of psychosis and perhaps contribute to resolving the mind–body problem. A number of questions arise in the study of dreams. Can dreams be reliably measured? Do dreams reflect differences where we know psychological differences exist? Do dreams change when there is a change in the state of the dreamer? Do dreams change across the night and across the REM period? Are the dreams of individuals different from one another? And are dreams of an individual different from night to night? Are dreams related to the waking life of the dreamer? Are dreams random or orderly? These are the questions this chapter undertakes to address.
Dreams have played as important a role in the civilisations from which our modern society originates as in primitive societies, not only in political terms but also in daily life [9], The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans were among those who erected incubation temples where people would spend the night in order to have their dreams interpreted the following morning - dreams which were considered as divine messages [59]. Some have seen dreams as a more natural phenomenon. Hippocrates examined dreams for their expression of certain illnesses. Aristotle searched their origins in the activities of the previous day and insisted that they could influence conscious life. Subsequently, he was probably the first to describe the phenomenon of lucid dreams.
Outlines a method of dream interpretation defining the reasoning on which direct, empathetic understanding of a patient's unconscious thought process is based. Four dreams and 1 daydream are presented. The 1st dream illustrates the 1st major operation of the author's interpretive procedure—to understand the dream as a response to the dreamer's immediate emotional situation. In subsequent examples, focus is on the great complexity of the dreamer's thought processes. An important working assumption of the method is that the various meanings of a dream must fit together intelligibly and fit into the dreamer's emotional situation at the moment of dreaming. These 2 working hypotheses serve as the most rigorous checks on this interpretive procedure. This portion of the procedure is called the reconstructing of the dream's cognitive structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
45 male undergraduates preselected for high or low neuroticism (as measured by the Maudsley Personality Inventory Neuroticism scale) were randomly assigned to a positive or negative (stress) presleep condition and slept a single night in the laboratory. The correlation between positive vs negative condition and valence of presleep and dream affect was, as predicted, significant for high-neuroticism but not for low-neuroticism Ss. As predicted, the negative condition was associated with a higher percentage of Ss with dream recall at the end of the night, and this was especially marked for infrequent dream recallers. Ss who dreamed overtly or symbolically of the presleep laboratory situation had a marked positive change in "state of mind." Specifically, postsleep affect was more positive, and postdebriefing attitude toward the experiment improved dramatically from predebriefing levels. Results support 2 basic hypotheses about dreaming: that it is a representational process (reflecting personality and presleep situations) and that it can be an adaptive process. (47 ref)
One difficulty associated with the study of dreams has been the absence of an objective indicator of dreaming in sleep other than REM. This study explores the use of a subjective judgment and instrumental response to mark the occurrence of dreams. Content reports of 8 subjects collected under two conditions were compared. On 2 nights the experimenter determined the time of the awakening and on the other 2 the subject's behavioral response was used as the indicator. The subjects' judgments that they were dreaming proved to be more accurate than was the experimenter's. A single case study of a high NREM responder carried out for 9 nights showed the frequency of NREM dreaming signals to covary with presleep mood.
A crucial problem in psychiatry, affecting clinical work as well as research, is the generally low reliability of current psychiatric diagnostic procedures. This article describes the development and initial reliability studies of a set of specific diagnostic criteria for a selected group of functional psychiatric disorders, the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC). The RDC are being widely used to study a variety of research issues, particularly those related to genetics, psychobiology of selected mental disorders, and treatment outcome. The data presented here indicate high reliability for diagnostic judgments made using these criteria.
The Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS) was developed to reduce information variance in both the descriptive and diagnostic evaluation of a subject. The SADS is unique among rating scales in that it provides for (1) a detailed description of the features of the current episodes of illness when they were at their most severe; (2) a description of the level of severity of manifestations of major dimensions of psychopathology during the week preceding the evaluation, which can then be used as a measure of change; (3) a progression of questions and criteria, which provides information for making diagnoses; and (4) a detailed description of past psychopathology and functioning relevant to an evaluation of diagnosis, prognosis, and overall severity of disturbance. This article reports on initial scale development and reliability studies of the items and the scale scores.
The Clinical Use of Dreams Depression The effect of stress on dreams
- W Bonime
Bonime, W. (1962). The Clinical Use of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. Beck, A. (1967). Depression. New York: Harper & Row. Breger, L., Hunter, I., & Lane, R W. (1971). The effect of stress on dreams. Psychological Issues Monograph, 7 (3, No. 27).
The relationship of the manifest content of dreams to duration of childbirth in primiparae This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is
- C Winget
- F T Kapp
Winget, C., & Kapp, F. T. (1972). The relationship of the manifest content of dreams to duration of childbirth in primiparae. Psychosomatic Medicine, 34(4), 313-319. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.