Dream Events Research Articles

The issue of human existence as represented in dreaming: A new Daseinsanalytic interpretation of the meaning of dreams

Dreams are associated with those issues of our waking life which preoccupy us emotionally. According to our Daseinsanalytic view, however, the issue that concerns us while dreaming is actually not the concrete worrying matter itself, but its existential dimension. This view is based on Martin Heidegger's concept of human being as that being to which its own being is an issue. It means that all feeling and understanding dealing with concrete issues concurrently refer to fundamental issues of our existence. Dreaming though, we are focused entirely on the fundamental aspects. Dreams show the very individual and specific struggle of the dreamer with certain conditions of human life, which he or she is unable or unwilling to accept because they seem too difficult to endure. I want to demonstrate this method of interpretation on a dream of a depressive patient. The example illustrates that the concerns of dreaming are rooted in and refer to an existential dilemma that is hidden in the concrete difficulties of waking life and represented in the concrete dream events. In addition, it gives us the opportunity to inquire into the specificity of the fundamental dilemma of a personality with a “depressive view” of the world.

Dreams are more negative than real life: Implications for the function of dreaming

Dream content studies have revealed that dream experiences are negatively biased; negative dream contents are more frequent than corresponding positive dream contents. It is unclear, however, whether the bias is real or due to biased sampling, i.e., selective memory for intense negative emotions. The threat simulation theory (TST) claims that the negativity bias is real and reflects the evolved biological function of dreaming. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis of the TST that threatening events are overrepresented in dreams, i.e., more frequent and more severe in dreams than in real life. To control for biased sampling, we used as a baseline the corresponding negative events in real life rather than the corresponding positive events in dreams. We collected dream reports (N=419) and daily event logs (N=490) from 39 university students during a two-week period, and interviewed them about real threat experiences retrievable from autobiographical memory (N=714). Threat experiences proved to be much more frequent and severe in dreams than in real life, and Current Dream Threats more closely resembled Past than Current Real Threats. We conclude that the TST's predictions hold, and that the negativity bias is real.

Lucid dreaming during Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT)

During lucid dreaming, the dreamer is explicitly aware of dreaming and may be able to influence the dream events. Lucid dreaming may occur in otherwise healthy subjects but is rarely captured by polysomnography. In the present case, a 24-year-old man presented with classic symptoms of narcolepsy with cataplexy. In addition, he reported being a frequent lucid dreamer. Before the second nap, during a Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT), he was instructed to look right four times if he achieved lucidity. The subject was able to do this. (Fig. 2) When awakened after the nap, he was excited and asked whether we had managed to record the event.

Incidence of Threat in Dreams: A Response to Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory.

A. Revonsuo (2000b) proposed an evolutionary theory of dreaming, stating it is a threat simulation mechanism that allowed early humans to rehearse threat perception and avoidance without biological cost. The present study aimed to establish the proportion of dreams containing physical threats to the dreamer, whether these represent realistic life-threatening events, and whether the dreamer successfully and realistically escapes. It also examined incidence of threatening events in real life. A sample of most recent dreams was collected (N = 401). Only 8.48% of dreamers reported realistic life-threatening events in dreams and a realistic escape subsequently occurred in only one third of these reports. Actual severe life-threatening events were experienced by 44.58% of the sample. These findings contradict key aspect so f Revonsuo’s theory. The authoritative journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences recently published a special edition containing new theories and extensive peer commentary on the nature and function of sleep and dreaming. Among the theories advanced was Revonsuo’s (2000b) threat simulation theory (TST). This theory postulates that dreaming serves the biological function of enhancing perception and avoidance of real-life threats, thus bestowing an adaptive advantage. TST is expressed in six propositions. Proposition 1 states that dream content is not random or disorganized but is a simulation of the perceptual world. Proposition 2 states that dream consciousness is specialized for simulating threatening events. From this, Revonsuo (2000b) made three predictions: First, if we define a category containing all threats, these threats will be overrepresented in dreams; second, severe or mortally dangerous threatening events will be included in dreams more frequently than in waking life; and third, if triggered by real events, the threat simulation mechanism should generate rehearsals of ancestral threats (e.g., animal attacks, direct physical aggression) more easily than modern threats (e.g., traffic accidents, explosives). Proposition 3 states that exposure to real threatening events activates the threat simulation mechanism. Proposition 4 states that the threat simulations produced by the fully

The threat simulation theory of the evolutionary function of dreaming: Evidence from dreams of traumatized children

The threat simulation theory of dreaming (TST) ( Revonsuo, 2000) states that dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defence mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events. Threat simulation during dreaming rehearses the cognitive mechanisms required for efficient threat perception and threat avoidance, leading to increased probability of reproductive success during human evolution. One hypothesis drawn from TST is that real threatening events encountered by the individual during wakefulness should lead to an increased activation of the system, a threat simulation response, and therefore, to an increased frequency and severity of threatening events in dreams. Consequently, children who live in an environment in which their physical and psychological well-being is constantly threatened should have a highly activated dream production and threat simulation system, whereas children living in a safe environment that is relatively free of such threat cues should have a weakly activated system. We tested this hypothesis by analysing the content of dream reports from severely traumatized and less traumatized Kurdish children and ordinary, non-traumatized Finnish children. Our results give support for most of the predictions drawn from TST. The severely traumatized children reported a significantly greater number of dreams and their dreams included a higher number of threatening dream events. The dream threats of traumatized children were also more severe in nature than the threats of less traumatized or non-traumatized children.

Dreams Within Dreams

The concept of a dream within a dream is studied intensively. The illusion created by the dream work portrays one portion of a dream enacted within the envelope of another. Freud (1900) emphasized that the function of placing a piece of reality in a dream within a dream is an attempt to rob it of its significance and obliterate it. However, he seemed curiously disinterested in the fact that segmentation of a dream text into two seemingly discrete fragments does offer a dream investigator the opportunity to explore the dynamic relationship between the two fragments and the multiple meanings of the illusion created during sleep. In this study the linkage between the two parts of the dream sequence is highlighted. While Freud's intuition is corroborated, his lack of interest in the duality of the dream events is puzzling, as if he believed that only the dream within a dream is meaningful and the complementary and contextual dream sequence can be ignored. This paper suggests that both portions of the dream within a dream are significant, the one helping to explicate the other as the free-associative process of dream interpretation gives equal democratic time to both.

Complete remission in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer: dream or achievable event

Complete remission in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer: dream or achievable event

Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology

Lucid dreaming provides a test case for theories of dreaming. For example, whether or not “loss of self-reflective awareness” is characteristic of dreaming, it is not necessary to dreaming. The fact that lucid dreamers can remember to perform predetermined actions and signal to the laboratory allows them to mark the exact time of particular dream events, allowing experiments to establish precise correlations between physiology and subjective reports, and enabling the methodical testing of hypotheses.[Hobson et al.; Solms]

Dreaming as delirium: A response to Allan Hobson.

My response to Allan Hobson makes several points. Primarily, I argue that the coherence of any dream cannot be determined by the recall of the dream events alone. Rather, coherence must surely reside in the dreamer's felt involvement in those dream events, and this is virtually impossible to determine from a dream report. Second, in response to Hobson's claim that a purely associative thought process neglects the role of dissociation, I argue that metaphor (analogical thinking in general), in all its forms, consists of a tension between resemblance and dissociation (a shift from one domain to another) and that the function of metaphor is, precisely, to free us from the gravity of received understanding. I suggest ways in which this process operates in all speculation, including art and science. Finally, I discuss the nature of dream orientation in connection with the specimen dream that Hobson provided.

Individual differences in orienting activity mediate feeling realization in dreams: II. Evidence from concurrent reports of movement inhibition.

Existential dreams, which involve ineffectuality, sadness, and separation (Kuiken & Sikora, 1993), frequently provide shifts in feeling that sensitize dreamers to aspects of their lives they have previously ignored. To better understand that phenomenon, we examined whether individual differences in movement inhibition during the orienting response (either while awake or dreaming) would predict: (a) the enactment of dreams during awakening, (b) a lingering sense of the reality of dream events, and (c) dream­ induced self-perceptual depth. Three studies using retrospective questionnaires and one using dream diaries provided consistent evidence of these relationships. Also, individual differences in movement inhibition and in the preceding dream effects were consistently associated with absorption (Tellegen, 1982), a personality dimension related to openness to experience. Finally, results from one study confirmed that dream-induced self­ perceptual depth is more closely associated with the occurrence of existential dreams; than with either anxiety dreams (nightmares) or transcendent (archetypal) dreams.

Comparison of dream interpretation, event, interpretation, and unstructured sessions in brief therapy.

Twenty-five distressed adult clients received 2 sessions each of dream and event interpretation using the Hill model during 12 sessions of successful therapy. No differences were found in depth, insight, and working alliance among dream interpretation, event interpretation, and unstructured sessions, suggesting that dream interpretation is as effective as other therapist strategies. Dream and event interpretation may be equally effective because both lead back to relevant waking concerns and past memories. Pretreatment measures of client psychological mindedness, openness, and insight were generally unrelated to each other, to evaluations of insight within sessions, to therapist evaluations of client insight, and to pre- and posttherapy changes in insight. Cognitive complexity of client dialogue was related to the process and outcome of dream interpretation.

Dreams in dissociative disorders.

This article reports on a survey of dream characteristics of 48 patients with a variety of dissociative disorders. For most of these disorders, recovery of repressed memories was the most frequent distinctive dream event. For patients with Multiple Personality Disorder, many other phenomena occurred including alters appearing as dream characters, alters who could orchestrate dream content, and even, rarely, integration occurring within a dream. The strong potential of these dream characteristics to facilitate the therapy of dissociative disorders is discussed.

Point of View in Nocturnal Dreaming

Most nocturnal dream reports of 4 young-adult subjects were of events reported to have been experienced from an own-eyes perspective. The alternative, see-oneself, perspective seems to be incompatible with full dream elaboration. This may help to explain the primitive form of dreaming in early development, when children are unable to imagine their own active participation in dream events.

The Electronic Library Manager's Guide to Virtual Reality

How often do you have fantasies in your mind? How often do you have vivid dreams of being the heroine tied to a railway track with the 01:34 express bearing down, desperately hoping that Superman will show up? Or of being James Bond with Bo Derek as your leading lady? How often have you identified with Calvin? Or even Hobbes? Did you know that apparently you can manipulate your dreams to make them more interactive? Instead of the dream events just unfolding before you, you can change the course of your activities within them — make things happen in a different way.

Processing of memories and knowledge in REM and NREM dreams.

Over 4 nights, 16 young-adult males each reported 2 REM and 2 nonREM dreams. They then identified possible sources of dream imagery in their waking memory and/or knowledge. A judge, naive as to conditions of data collection, reliably judged the closeness of correspondence of dream event to identified source. Correspondence was lower for REM than for nonREM reports and for longer than for shorter reports from either stage.

Appropriateness of dream feelings to dreamed situations

Abstract Affect appropriateness was determined for representatively sampled (REM) dream reports. Seventeen young adults were studied for two nights each. The following data were collected: dream reports; accounts of feelings experienced while dreaming; judgements of feelings appropriate to the dreamed situations had they occurred in wakefulness; and ratings of the correspondence of dream and waking-appropriate feelings. Outside judges given access to both the dream and its feelings rated correspondence in the same manner. Other judges were given access only to dream events and attempted to predict the dreamer's feelings. Where the dream had feelings and the dream situation was judged to require them, these feelings were judged both by the dreamer and the outside judges to be generally similar. The major feeling anomaly was affectless dreaming of situations requiring affect. Dream feelings were relatively difficult to predict, but not more so than waking ones.

Incorporation of Recent Events in Dreams

Incorporation of Recent Events in Dreams

Affect Incidence by Reported Serial Position of Dream Events

Affect Incidence by Reported Serial Position of Dream Events

Sleep disruption in the course of chronic levodopa therapy: an early feature of the levodopa psychosis.

Sleep disruption is a common complaint in levodopa-treated parkinsonian patients. A survey of 100 parkinsonian patients revealed prominent sleep complaints in 74%. Sleep complaints were unrelated to patient age and the duration of disease but increased in prevalence with longer periods of levodopa therapy. Sleep abnormalities tended to increase in severity with continued treatment and insomnia tended to be followed by daytime somnolence, altered dream events, and episodic nocturnal vocalization and myoclonus. While dyskinetic side effects and on-off syndrome were encountered in patients with and without sleep complaints, 98% of patients experiencing psychiatric side effects also reported sleep disruption. It is suggested that sleep-related symptoms constitute an early stage of levodopa-induced dopaminergic psychiatric toxicity in the parkinsonian population. Clinical and experimental observations suggest that serotonergic mechanisms are important in this symptom complex.

Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication during Rem Sleep

The occurrence of lucid dreaming (dreaming while being conscious that one is dreaming) has been verified for 5 selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unequivocal REM sleep. The signals consisted of particular dream actions having observable concomitants and were performed in accordance with pre-sleep agreement. The ability of proficient lucid dreamers to signal in this manner makes possible a new approach to dream research--such subjects, while lucid, could carry out diverse dream experiments marking the exact time of particular dream events, allowing derivation of of precise psychophysiological correlations and methodical testing of hypotheses.