Dream Diary Research Articles

A Palliative Care Physician's Dream Journal.

A Palliative Care Physician's Dream Journal.

Sensational Dreams: The Prevalence of Sensory Experiences in Dreaming.

Dreaming, a widely researched aspect of sleep, often mirrors waking-life experiences. Despite the prevalence of sensory perception during wakefulness, sensory experiences in dreams remain relatively unexplored. Free recall dream reports, where individuals describe their dreams freely, may not fully capture sensory dream experiences. In this study, we developed a dream diary with direct questions about sensory dream experiences. Participants reported sensory experiences in their dreams upon awakening, over multiple days, in a home-based setting (n = 3476 diaries). Our findings show that vision was the most common sensory dream experience, followed by audition and touch. Olfaction and gustation were reported at equally low rates. Multisensory dreams were far more prevalent than unisensory dreams. Additionally, the prevalence of sensory dream experiences varied across emotionally positive and negative dreams. A positive relationship was found between on the one hand sensory richness and, on the other emotional intensity of dreams and clarity of dream recall, for both positive and negative dreams. These results underscore the variety of dream experiences and suggest a link between sensory richness, emotional content and dream recall clarity. Systematic registration of sensory dream experiences offers valuable insights into dream manifestation, aiding the understanding of sleep-related memory consolidation and other aspects of sleep-related information processing.

Between Safed and Vienna: Chajim Bloch’s the Memoires of the Kabbalist Vital

Abstract In 1927, a small book titled Lebenserinnerungen des Kabbalisten Vital (The Memoires of the Kabbalist Vital) was published in Vienna. Its author was Chajim Bloch (1881–1973), a Rabbi, independent scholar, translator, author, and erstwhile forger. The book includes a German rendition of Sefer ha-Hezyonot (The Book of Visions), the memoirs and dream diary of the famous 16th century Kabbalist Hayyim Vital (1542–1620), along with introductions and postscripts written by Bloch himself, as well as by the esotericist and German nationalist Franz Spunda (1890–1963) and the Jewish-Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1944). The Memoires of the Kabbalist Vital sheds interesting light on Vienna’s interwar culture and the revival of interest in Kabbalah and Hasidism in the modern period. However, this intriguing book and its colorful author has received very little scholarly attention until now. This article delves into Bloch’s intellectual biography, with a focus on his rendition of The Book of Visions and its paratexts. It also explores some later accounts given by Bloch regarding the publication of the book. The article examines the various interconnected contexts of the translation and publication of the book, revealing interesting connections between Kabbalah, Western esotericism, psychoanalysis, and antisemitism in Vienna in the interwar period.

COVID-19 on mind: Daily worry about the coronavirus is linked to negative affect experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming.

Despite a surge of studies on the effects of COVID-19 on our well-being, we know little about how the pandemic is reflected in people's spontaneous thoughts and experiences, such as mind-wandering (or daydreaming) during wakefulness and dreaming during sleep. We investigated whether and how COVID-19-related general concern, anxiety, and daily worry are associated with the daily fluctuation of the affective quality of mind-wandering and dreaming, and to what extent these associations can be explained by poor sleep quality. We used ecological momentary assessment by asking participants to rate the affect they experienced during mind-wandering and dreaming in daily logs over a 2-week period. Our preregistered analyses based on 1,755 dream logs from 172 individuals and 1,496 mind-wandering logs from 152 individuals showed that, on days when people reported higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect during mind-wandering, they experienced more worry. Only daily sleep quality was associated with affect experienced during dreaming at the within-person level: on nights with poorer sleep quality people reported experiencing more negative and less positive affect in dreams and were more likely to experience nightmares. However, at the between-person level, individuals who experienced more daily COVID-19 worry during the study period also reported experiencing more negative affect during mind-wandering and during dreaming. As such, the continuity between daily and nightly experiences seems to rely more on stable trait-like individual differences in affective processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Application of the “Banchenko's Mnemonic Dream Synchronization Method” for the Joint Synchronization of Dream Elements (Including Lucid Dreams), within the Framework of “Blokhin's Dreaming Cell Concept,” and the Analysis of the Obtained Results Using the “Kapustin's AI Dream Matching Model.”

Purpose: The research is aimed at studying the potential for dream synchronization, including lucid dreams, among a group of participants using the concepts of "memes" and "tag-memes" within the framework of the "Banchenko Algorithm" and the "Mnemonic Dream Synchronization Technique of Banchenko." Additionally, it aims to assess the effectiveness of a new artificial intelligence model built and trained by Mykhailo Kapustin for identifying correlations in the dreams of the participants [1]. Methods: In the study, eight participants from different countries kept dream journals for a month. Afterward, the artificial intelligence model developed by Kapustin was trained to analyze these dreams. Following this, over the course of 16 days, synchronization among the group of participants was conducted using the "Mnemonic Dream Synchronization Technique of Banchenko," which included activities like collectively watching the TV series "The OA. Synchronization took into account the difference in time zones. Additionally, synchronous discussions of the viewing were carried out on the Telegram messenger, along with additional discussions related to key concepts and "tag-memes." Data analysis covered 30 days before synchronization and 30 days after the start of synchronization, using Kapustin's model with subsequent manual verification [2].Results: The data obtained for two periods confirm the influence of synchronization during wakefulness on dreams and highlight the emergence of "memes" and "tag-memes" in dream content, as well as objects and scenes unrelated to the elements of discussion or collective viewings. In-depth discussions during wakefulness contribute to the development of unique "tag-memes" within the group. The novelty of the research is based on the fact that it's suggested that electromagnetic fields may serve as mediators in intercellular communication, facilitating the exchange of information between cells. The systematic keeping of dream journals may influence the content of dreams. The frequency of lucid dreams remained stable, which may indicate the limited effectiveness of isolated methods of joint tuning without additional methods for inducing lucid dreams. Conclusions: The research highlights the impact of wakeful-state synchronization on dream content. "Memes" and "tag-memes" play their roles, but systematic dream journaling is also important for improving dream recall. The frequency of lucid dreams suggests the need for further investigation into isolated practices. A computational model excels at identifying common dream objects, but human evaluation remains integral during algorithm refinement.

Dreaming with AI

Our goal is to highlight the capabilities of modern, generative AI systems using the widely used and accessible ChatGPT text completion models from OpenAI, focusing on how they can be used for the analysis of dreams and dream journals. We start with a brief overview of the nature of dreams, methods of dream interpretation, and the importance of the human-dream relationship. We explore the ways that technology, specifically AI, fits into this space and examine the ways in which AI can be used to help us understand our dreams. We progress from simple dream interpretations, to interpretations according to different schools of thought, to interpreting symbols within individual dreams, and finally to analyzing patterns in individual dream journals. We conclude with a discussion of the ethical concerns surrounding AI and dreams, providing insights from past technological revolutions and how they have both helped and hindered the human endeavor. We finally outline what we believe to be a practical, realistic, and hopeful vision of how we see this field progressing based on the experiments and methodologies that were explored in this paper.

Evidence for an emotional adaptive function of dreams: a cross-cultural study

The function of dreams is a longstanding scientific research question. Simulation theories of dream function, which are based on the premise that dreams represent evolutionary past selective pressures and fitness improvement through modified states of consciousness, have yet to be tested in cross-cultural populations that include small-scale forager societies. Here, we analyze dream content with cross-cultural comparisons between the BaYaka (Rep. of Congo) and Hadza (Tanzania) foraging groups and Global North populations, to test the hypothesis that dreams in forager groups serve a more effective emotion regulation function due to their strong social norms and high interpersonal support. Using a linear mixed effects model we analyzed 896 dreams from 234 individuals across these populations, recorded using dream diaries. Dream texts were processed into four psychosocial constructs using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22) dictionary. The BaYaka displayed greater community-oriented dream content. Both the BaYaka and Hadza exhibited heightened threat dream content, while, at the same time, the Hadza demonstrated low negative emotions in their dreams. The Global North Nightmare Disorder group had increased negative emotion content, and the Canadian student sample during the COVID-19 pandemic displayed the highest anxiety dream content. In conclusion, this study supports the notion that dreams in non-clinical populations can effectively regulate emotions by linking potential threats with non-fearful contexts, reducing anxiety and negative emotions through emotional release or catharsis. Overall, this work contributes to our understanding of the evolutionary significance of this altered state of consciousness.

Patterns of evidentials use in dream narratives

The article presents a study on evidentials use in dream reports collected from online dream journals. First, I discuss the relation between the categories of stance and evidentiality. Specifically, I define evidentiality for the needs of this research as a semantic category that labels the source of information in the English language. Evidentiality encompasses perception, reportative evidentiality, and inferential judgment. The role of evidentials in rendering the dream experience is considerable due to the quasi-perceptual and specific experientiality of dreaming. Therefore, the core categories of evidentiality were singled out for this study, such as revelative, sensory and sensory-inferential, reportative, non-sensory inferential and mirative (marking unexpected information). The sample was then manually processed to count the relative frequencies of the means rendering these subcategories of evidentiality. The main findings reside in the role of revelative evidentials in marking the status of dream vs. real narrative spaces. Additionally, the classic assumption about the visuality of dreams was confirmed by the high number of visual perceptual evidentials, while audial and other perceptual mode instances are much fewer in the sample. Finally, the choice of evidential subcategories in dream reports is conditioned by the narrators’ need to account for vague recollection of dreaming experience with the preference for simpler inferential forms. In turn, the category of mirativity (i.e. labeling of unexpected information) is discussed as a prospective research avenue due to its rich potential in subtle yet informative marking of the speaker’s reaction to the information communicated or to the channel of obtaining it.

Does chronic pain influence our dreams? A dream content analytical approach

Abstract Background To date, the relationship between frequent nightmares, chronic pain, waking-life distress and sleep quality is still unclear. Previous research has shown that chronic pain patients reported more frequent nightmares and critical life events compared to a control group. Moreover, patients reported pain dreams similar to pain in their waking-life, whereas controls reported pain dreams sparsely. Objective The aim of this study was to replicate these findings and to analyze the dream content of chronic pain patients in more detail. Methods A sample of chronic pain patients and healthy control individuals, matched in age and gender, were recruited. All participants completed psychometric questionnaires and a narrative dream diary for 14 consecutive days. Results Nightmare frequency, nightmare distress, pain dreams and distress caused by life events were increased in chronic pain patients compared to the control group. In addition, the patient group reported significantly more negative and aggressive dream contents and physical sensations in their dreams than the controls. These findings replicate continuity between waking-life and dream experiences concerning pain sensation. Distress caused by critical life events also played an important role in negative dream affect and pain perception.

From Editor-in-Chief’s Keyboard (January-2023)

Hello 2023!!! The year with greater complexity and excitement.Are we prepared for all the transitions, advancements, and instabilities? Numerous academicians and industry professionals have forecast that the economy will deteriorate as a result of the war crisis, the covid-19 outbreak, the rising cost of raw materials, climate change, and technological disruption. Not even Our DREAM Journal is exempt. My colleagues and I must work quickly to ensure that all issues and creative work innovations adhere to the newest trends and versions. Through revolutionary culture to out-of-this-world innovations, this issue honours innovators and their insatiable desire to challenge the status quo. The alternative paradigm for virtual tourism and digital marketing was emphasised in an article by Stefanus Rumangkit and Antonius Satria Hadi (page 01-11). Website design, social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, and affiliate marketing are the components of digital marketing. Many variables, including online destination knowledge, online destination authenticity, entertainment, enjoyment, and international virtual heritage tourism, exist within this conceptual framework. Because of this ongoing transformation, digital marketing has a solid and exciting future. As the digital marketplace continues to expand, it is expected that the remaining 23% of businesses will follow suit, bringing the total number of businesses using industry-standard content marketing tactics to nearly 77%. Excited right?? Check out more on the introduction to our issue for the year 2023. Enjoy your reading and life to the fullest! Editor-in-Chief ASSOC. PROF. DR. ILHAM SENTOSA

Living Humanitarian Dreams: The Oneiric and Spiritual Life and Activism of Elizabeth Wilson (1909–2000)

ABSTRACT This article examines the diaries, autobiographies and dream journals of Elizabeth Wilson (1909-2000), founder of Huddersfield Famine Relief Committee (Hudfam), long-term activist of CND and member of Oxfam. Taken together with her journalism for the local press and for Hudfam and Oxfam publications, her activism and writings cover the period between 1942 and 1999. Using the historiography and the sociology of emotions and dreams this article proposes to analyse afresh the spiritual grounding of localised humanitarian work and internationalism. By considering together her humanitarian work, her pacifist activism and her subsequent humanitarian work both at home and abroad this article can then engage with the manner in which dreamwork and dream analysis brought together the different strands of her activism rooted in spiritualism.

Presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of them.

Dreaming is the subjective experience during sleep. A spontaneous thought is a thought that comes to one's mind involuntarily. This study investigated whether presleep focusing on a positive spontaneous thought enhanced the possibility of dreaming of the thought. Ninety-seven participants were quasi-randomly assigned to an expression condition (focus on an spontaneous thought for 5-Min before sleeping; N = 45) and a control condition (think about anything for 5-Min before sleeping; N = 45). Participants completed a dream diary upon waking. Then, both participants themselves (the selfrating method) and external judges (the external-rating method) rated the correlation between the positive spontaneous thought and the dream. The result of the external-rating method indicated that presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of the thoughts. In addition, the external-rating method found that presleep focusing on positive spontaneous thoughts enhanced the possibility of dreaming of thoughts that were related to the positive spontaneous thoughts but not the positive spontaneous thoughts themselves. These results supported the current concern theory which suggests that one's current concerns increase responses to cues related to the concerns implicitly. In addition, these results supported the continuity hypothesis which states that dreaming is in continuous with waking life, and thus the intensity of a daily concern may be related to the possibility of dreaming of the daily concern.

At the Edges of Sleep

At the Edges of Sleep

Nightmare distress is related to traumatic childhood experiences, critical life events and emotional appraisal of a dream rather than to its content.

Nightmares are a substantial burden for sleep quality. Previous studies have shown that traumatic experiences can increase the probability of nightmares, and also waking-life distress can enhance this effect. There is evidence that the intensity of negative dream emotions is more responsible for rating a dream as a nightmare than threatening dream contents. However, there is still a lack of research concerning effects on nightmare distress. We hypothesise that traumatic childhood experiences (such as emotional abuse, obtained by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire), critical life events (obtained by the Social Readjustment Rating Scale) and threatening dream contents are associated with nightmare distress. A sample of N= 103 participants kept a dream diary over 28 consecutive days. About 60% of the sample were frequent nightmare dreamers. The participants recorded their violent dream contents and dream emotions in their diary. To predict nightmare distress, regression models were constructed; nightmare distress was measured with the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire. Results showed that emotional abuse in childhood and critical life events predicted nightmare distress. Moreover, violent dream contents were associated with nightmare distress but, after we controlled for nightmare frequency and the intensity of negative dream emotions, the significant impact of violent dream contents decreased. The results suggest that the emotional appraisal of a dream has a substantial influence on nightmares in addition to traumatic childhood experiences and critical life events.

In Case You Haven't Heard…

Dreams are different for anxious people, according to a new study published in Dreaming, which analyzes the dreams of people with anxiety disorders, Forbes reported July 17. The study suggests these frequently troubling dreams can turn the waking life of such individuals into a nightmare if they are not provided with the right care. “The results of our study reveal that the dream contents of anxiety patients differ significantly from the dream contents of healthy persons and contain more negative and unpleasant elements,” explained lead author and psychologist Anton Rimsh of Universität Düsseldorf in Germany. Rimsh's study tracked the dream contents of 38 anxiety patients through dream diaries, questionnaires, and one‐on‐one dream analysis. The results of the study found several dream topics to be more prevalent in anxiety patients compared with healthy persons. These themes include being chased and pursued, being physically attacked and facing aggressive actions, and the fear of falling. However, Rimsh warned that anxiety patients can find themselves stuck in negative feedback loops between their waking life and dreams, i.e., the negative dreams can worsen anxiety symptoms in their waking life which makes for even more disturbing dreams and so on.

Objects of remembrance and renewal

Abstract The relation between translation and experiences of migrants as depicted in fiction has been widely discussed, through the lens of both interlingual translation and cultural translation. The latter refers to the ongoing negotiation and representation of one’s values, symbols, and practices vis-à-vis the local majority group. The link between cultural translation and interlingual translation deserves careful exploration. This article examines the interface between these translational concepts through their intersections with two material diasporic objects in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams. The first object is the dream journals, handwritten in Bengali by the late mother of the young protagonist and translated into English by her father. The second object comprises culinary items and the interlingual procedures related to them. The analysis showcases various ways in which interlingual translation may provoke and participate in cultural translation within the context of diasporic literature.

Aggressiveness in the dreams of drug-naïve and clonazepam-treated patients with isolated REM sleep behavior disorder

BackgroundAlthough aggressive dream content is considered a distinctive feature of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) and patients often report violent dreams during medical interviews, nonviolent behaviors (eating, drinking, urinating) and pleasant actions (e.g laughing, singing, dancing) or simply elemental, jerky limb movements are frequently observed during video-polysomnography. As a first-line pharmacological treatment, clonazepam has been shown to reduce motor symptoms during REM sleep, but its effect on dream content remains unclear. Here, we aimed to prospectively assess the dream content of individuals with drug-naïve isolated RBD (iRBD) and iRBD patients treated with clonazepam. MethodsThirteen (12 Male, 1 Female; age 65.38 ± 10.95) iRBD patients treated with clonazepam (iRBD-T), eleven (9 M, 2 F; age 68.90 ± 6.8) drug-naïve patients (iRBD-NT) and twelve (8 M, 1 F; age 63.33 ± 12.88) healthy control subjects of comparable age kept a dream diary over a 3-week period. Dream content analysis was conducted according to the Hall and Van de Castle method (HVdC). The Threat Simulation Scale (TSS) was employed to assess the frequency of threatening contents. ResultsA total of 214 dream reports were collected. No significant differences were found in the frequency of threatening dream contents between the iRBD subsamples and healthy control subjects (p = 0.732). The HVdC analysis detected higher levels of Friendliness in iRBD patients compared to the control group (p = 0.036). Increased levels of Aggressiveness were only observed when differentiating dreams in which dream enactment behaviors (DEB) were present compared to dreams without DEBs, both in the iRBD-T group (p = 0.007) and the iRBD-NT group (p = 0.012). ConclusionOur study shows no difference in the frequency of violent or threatening dreams in drug-naïve iRBD patients, clonazepam-treated iRBD patients and healthy control individuals. Aggressiveness is more frequent when DEBs are reported, suggesting motor disinhibition could require sufficiently dramatic and emotionally intense dreams, independent of clonazepam treatment.

Presleep Ruminating on Intrusive Thoughts Increased the Possibility of Dreaming of Threatening Events.

This study investigated whether ruminating on an intrusive thought before sleeping led to an increased likelihood of dreaming of threatening events. One hundred and forty-six participants were randomly assigned to a rumination condition (a rumination on an intrusive thought for 5 min before sleeping; N = 73) and a control condition (think about anything for 5 min before sleeping; N = 73). Participants completed a dream diary upon waking. The result showed that presleep ruminating on an intrusive thought increased the frequency of both threatening dreams and negative emotions in dreams. In addition, dreams with threatening events were more emotional and negative than dreams without threatening events. These results may support the threat simulation theory of dreaming. In addition, these results may give some insight into a mathematical model for the continuity hypothesis of dreaming.

Still More to Say

ABSTRACT After Lolita brought him international fame, Vladimir Nabokov kept producing new novels while translating earlier Russian works into English. Since his death, other translations, fiction, lectures, correspondence, writings on lepidoptera, and even a dream diary have appeared. The latest book, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor, offers a dazzling introduction to his work while tracing his progress from an essay on “Cambridge,” written as a Russian émigré student in 1921, to an interview with the BBC Books Programme in 1977. Scholars of American literature will be intrigued by evidence of his transformation from Russian author V. Sirin to American writer and university professor Vladimir Nabokov—including his first interview (in Russian) after arriving in New York City in 1940, his early book reviews (in English) for American journals, fascinating glimpses of his academic career at Wellesley and Cornell, and dozens of charmingly playful interviews from Lolita’s publication until his death. More than eight decades since Nabokov immigrated to the United States, there is still much to learn about his American literary career.

Vladimir Beșleagă’s dream journal (manuscript): introspective views on our own existence

The article analyzes Vladimir Besleaga’s dream diary, an original manuscript, unknown to the wide public, which can be consulted at the National Museum of Romanian Literature “Mihail Kogalniceanu”, the collection of “Manuscripts”. The manuscript was offered by the author to the researcher, PhD in philology Ana Ghilas and the undersigned, in order to explore the depths of the creative imaginary of the nonagenarian Bessarabian writer. Thus, in the diary we will recognize some recurring images impregnated in the literary creation of Vladimir Besleaga – village, house, mother, water, father etc. The usual area and childhood experiences are for the author of this diary (with the title of manuscript Dreams of night and day (diary ante- anti- octogenate)) an endless source of miracles that helps him to renew his creative impulses and to put in order his ordinary, profane human condition with sacred elements from the abyss of being.