Dream Narratives Research Articles

Sex differences in dreaming during short propofol sedation for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy

Previous reports suggest that sex differences may exist in dreaming under anesthesia, but their results were inconclusive. The current study explored sex differences in the incidence and content of dreams during short propofol sedation for upper gastrointestinal endoscopy and investigated whether sex differences or dream content affect patient satisfaction with sedation. A total of 200 patients (100 men and 100 women) undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy participated in this study. Patients were interviewed with the modified Brice questionnaire about the incidence and the content of dreams, and satisfaction with sedation was assessed. The results showed that the incidence of dreaming was significantly higher in men (31%) than in women (17%) (P=0.02), but recovery time was similar. In men, 45% (14/31) of dreamers reported positive emotional content and only 6% (2/31) reported negative emotional content. In contrast, in women, 18% (3/17) reported positive and 29% (5/17) reported negative content (P=0.04). Men reported dreams that were more vivid, meaningful, familiar, and memorable (P<0.01). No significant sex differences were observed in the emotional intensity of dreams, and emotional content did not influence patients' satisfaction. In sum, sex differences existed in dreaming during short propofol sedation despite similar recovery time and matching in terms of age. Men reported dreaming more frequently and had a higher incidence of recall for their dream narratives. In particular, men reported significantly more positive emotional content, less negative emotional content, and more meaningful content. Dreamer satisfaction with sedation was not influenced by sex or dream content.

Romantic Vision and Gothic Balladry: Anne Bannerman's Tales of Superstition and Chivalry

AbstractLike her women Romantic contemporaries Joanna Baillie and Anna Barbauld, the Scottish poet Anne Bannerman (1765–1829) took an interest in the imaginative possibilities conferred by the tradition of British visionary poetics, a longstanding mode of imaginative production engaged by authors such as Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and many of the canonical Romantics, including William Blake, William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Evoking the style, conventions and disruptive objectives of Judeo‐Christian scriptural prophecy, visionary poetics created an opportunity for authors to express unpopular and even radical ideas within culturally sanctioned literary frameworks such as dream narratives, portrayals of seers and imaginative accounts of mystical or otherworldly experiences. In her second published volume of poetry, 1802's Tales of Superstition and Chivalry, Bannerman makes use of several themes, images and tropes associated with visionary poetry in what appears at first glance to be a volume of Gothic ballads. That pieces such as ‘The Prophetess of the Oracle of Seäm’ and ‘The Prophecy of Merlin’ place her Tales within the context of vatic literature becomes more compelling when we consider how Bannerman redraws certain conventions of the visionary subgenre and so transforms the Gothic idiom.

The Role of Dreams in the Political Affairs of the Safavid Dynasty

This article explores a new window into Safavid political history – Safavid dream narratives. In that era, dreams were told to justify the kings’ deeds and to legitimise their hegemony. These dreams, the symbols in the dreams, and the way they were interwoven into the political affairs of the time reflect the widely held beliefs of the people in dreams and dream interpretation. Moreover, dream narratives divulge how political and religious goals could be pursued and achieved through dream-telling and dream interpretation. This article examines why, and in which periods, dreams were appropriated by Safavid kings as legitimising instruments. The author will analyse influential dream narratives from a wide range of Safavid texts and determine the different categories of dreams that were related.

Decoded by Jay Z (review)

Reviewed by: Decoded by Jay Z Demetrius Noble Jay Z. Decoded. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010. 336 pp. $35.00. Working through the persona of Jay Z, Shawn Carter remains perhaps hip hop’s most successful artist and businessman. Like his rap lyrics, his best-selling 2010 memoir Decoded details how Carter transformed the hardships of poverty and his dangerous career as a crack dealer into a multimillion-dollar empire. His story, as he tells it, is the quintessential American Dream, Gatsby in sepia-tones. Predictably, then, Decoded details Carter’s transition from indigence to wealth. While this story has its own interesting (and highly entertaining) dimensions, its narrative concept is far from novel. More genuinely intriguing is Decoded’s negotiation of race, class, gender, and place, as Carter’s identity shifts from poor black child to crack hustler to famous rap star to rich mogul to exceedingly wealthy cultural spokesman. [End Page 191] Through the lens and voice of Jay Z, blackness, as both a performative and political construct, is achieved only through a “liberatory” (albeit predatory) capitalism. In ways that Jay Z refuses to acknowledge, his notion of capitalism as (post)racial triumph depends on pernicious distinctions within a racialized and gendered constituency of poor and working-class others. These distinctions, I will argue, rely on the most dubious premises underlying his dream narrative. This reliance is most apparent in Decoded’s recurring efforts to normalize crack selling by juxtaposing the tenets of the drug industry with the operating maxims of any for-profit corporation. When comparing crack-dealing to working at McDonald’s, for instance, Jay Z declares that “[t]he truth is that most kids on the corner aren’t making big money—especially if you break their income down to an hourly wage. But they’re getting rewarded in many ways that go beyond dollars and cents. The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream” (75). This is a crucial claim for Jay Z. Hustling embodies the possibility of a dream; McDonald’s only offers the possibility of a promotion. Therefore, “[t]he only reason to [hustle] is for the top slot,” and “[i]f you’ve got the heart and the brains you can move up quickly” (75). Jay Z adds that “[t]here’s no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it’s that dream of being the exception, the one that gets rich and gets out … that’s the key to a hustler’s motivation” (76). Notice, then, that the “hustler’s motivation” is predicated on the hyper-individualist impetus of the exception. Ties with and to the community are quickly abandoned in favor of “get[ting] out.” This emphasis on escape is obscured, however, by Jay Z’s insistence on speaking for the very same community (and culture) from which he quickly “moved up” and out. Hip hop and the Marcy Housing Projects in Brooklyn, New York thereby occupy ambivalent places in Decoded, as Jay Z exploits his relationship with these spaces in order to be recognized as an authentically learned cultural translator (read informant) operating at the behest of well-off white America. Decoded, as Jay Z boldly asserts in the book’s epilogue, is not just a guide to understanding his lyrics or his life’s story, but rather the key to unlocking the pathos of all rappers. Jay Z declares that he “wrote this book” because he wants “people to understand what the words we use—and the stories we tell—are really about” (308). He thereby tasks Decoded with “tell[ing] a little bit of the story of my generation, to show the context for the choices we made at a violent and chaotic crossroads in recent history” (235). And it certainly is just “a little bit” of the story. Jay Z’s narrow vantage point on an entire generation’s struggle with crack cocaine rests on the thin line between the “the story of the rapper and the story of the hustler” (10). The scope and wherewithal afforded in this finite space tells the real missing story, which, to Jay Z’s mind, is “how young cats were...

Transport and Mobility in Danish Historiography

Automobilism—the culture of individual mobility based on private transportation—is promoted by leisure, consumption, the construction of infrastructure, and the provision of service by auto clubs. It promises to carry the driver away on a voyage of discovery with narratives of adventurousness and dreams of the good life on the road. It was from the outset an international movement with national repercussions and variations on a theme. Basically, however, the rise of European automobile culture accompanied the rise of consumption for leisure, which in turn evolved into a consumption regime of mediation and consumption junctions based on individual mobility and tourism.

La conversión de Jerónimo y de Agustín a la Escritura, a través del pórtico de los sueños (ep. 22 y conf. 3 y 8)

The article makes a comparison between the dream narrative of Jerome in his letter 22 and Augustine’s in conf. 3, 19 and conf. 8, 29, to stress that probably both dreams happened the same year, and that both dreams helped Jerome and Augustine in their way to convert from the love to pagan literature, to the full acceptance of the Holy Scriptures as Word of God.

What links schizophrenia and dreaming? Common phenomenological and neurobiological features of schizophrenia and REM sleep.

Aim. The aim of this theoretical study is to present common phenomenological and neurobiological features of schizophrenia and REM sleep. Results. A review of professional literature was conducted in order to synthesize current findings about associations between schizophrenia and REM sleep. Many researches reveal that both states share some common phenomenological and neurobiological features. Autism, lack of insight and a loss of autonomy in relation to mental content are just some of the characteristics that occur on a phenomenological level in both dreams during REM sleep (lucid dreaming excluded) and schizophrenia. Data from experimental conditions revealed that the waking mentation of patients suffering from schizophrenia has a similar degree of formal cognitive bizarreness as dream narratives obtained from both non-clinical and clinical populations. On the other hand, some common neurobiological features of the REM sleep stage and schizophrenia are: lack of central inhibitory processes, intracerebral disconnections, dysfunction of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or nucleus accumbens and disturbed responsiveness. Moreover, there is similar activation of dopamine, acetylcholine, noradrenaline, serotonin and glutamate in both states. Conclusions. Common phenomenological and neurobiological characteristics of these two states suggest that data about REM sleep could help introduce a useful experimental model of schizophrenia.

Initial and Last Manifest Dream Reports of Patients in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Combined Psychotherapy/Pharmacotherapy

The initial and last manifest dream reports (MDRs) of 30 patients who had either successfully terminated, or continued to make satisfactory progress at an advanced stage of psychodynamic psychotherapy and combined psychotherapy/pharmacotherapy, were rated according to the following variables: Affect and Affect Valence; Affect Valence of Associations and Direction of Association Themes; Dream Narrative; Psychodynamic Formulation; Transference; and Dream Theme. Similar to previous studies, the initial MDRs contained more negative than positive affect. Conversely, the last MDRs contained more positive than negative affect. Associations to initial MDRs contained more negative affect; on the other hand, associations to last MDRs contained more positive affect. Direction of association themes were more negative in initial MDRs and more positive in last MDRs. Dream narratives were more negative in initial MDRs and more positive in last MDRs. Psychodynamic formulations were more negative in initial MDRs and more positive in last MDRs. Transference was more negative in initial MDRs and more positive in last MDRs. Relational and injury dream themes occurred more frequently than others in both initial and last MDRs. Initial MDRs contained more injury dream themes than last MDRs. The findings of this study demonstrate that there is a correlation between MDR variables and clinical improvement during treatment. The patients in this study were selected by MG, the treating therapist, on the basis of satisfactory progress. The MDRs of patients who failed to progress or did poorly were not discussed in this report. The findings, therefore, must be taken as preliminary and indicate the need for further research on manifest dreams during psychotherapy and combined psychotherapy/pharmacotherapy.

Traditional Dream Narration and Interpretation

Abstract This article focuses on popular dream narration and interpretation, drawing from material gathered in Finland. The Finnish Folklore Archives and university students provided some of the examples, and others are from responses to questionnaires in newspapers and women's magazines.

Through the Deamon's Gate: Kepler's “Somnium,” Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs

Through the Deamon's Gate: Kepler's “Somnium,” Medieval Dream Narratives, and the Polysemy of Allegorical Motifs

Creativity and Chaos in Waking and Dreaming States

Dynamics of creative mental activity are examined in waking and dreaming processes which manifest beyond normative waking consciousness. Some consider such phenomena to be pathological or meaningless. Alternatively they may be viewed in new and healthier ways, in the context of adaptive mental controls, using nonlinear dynamical/chaos theory. The first example involves the innovativeness reported with mild mood elevation in bipolar mood disorders, linked to a compensatory advantage model of everyday creativity. With adequate controls, such mood elevation may open adaptive creative mental possibilities (in fact, for all of us). Tension between divergent and convergent thinking—as noted by J.P. Guilford, and common to many models of creative process—can further “edge of chaos” states and raise the odds of bifurcation to new and creative chaotic attractors. The second example involves REM sleep and dream phenomena, where the self-organizing brain coordinates the dream’s component parts to generate unusual dream narratives. However fanciful, such divergent and condensed dream content may lead to creative insights and adaptive narratives (there are famous examples) in the light of day, when interpreted or further developed, by bringing convergent processing to divergent processing. In each case, one finds the abnormal is not necessarily pathological—and sometimes can be usefully exceptional. One consequence of a dynamical view and these examples is the need, in all of us, for greater openness to experience, and acceptance of a greater divergence of expression and behavior (vs. conformity) in ourselves, our culture, and our world. NeuroQuantology | June 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 2 | Page 164-176

La Poétique romanesque de Joris-Karl Huysmans

This densely written volume challenges the prevailing critical highlighting in Joris-Karl Huysmans's work of the rupture caused by his conversion to Catholicism; it contends that persistent naturalist techniques and themes can be observed throughout his entire œuvre. By extensively examining his literary works, critical writings, and correspondence, the author confronts the convention by which the development of Huysmans's writings falls into three categories: naturalism, decadence, and mysticism. Instead, she proposes to see it as a process of ‘inclusion’ not ‘exclusion’ (p. 47). Part I finds, from Huysmans's own intention and awareness, the meticulous research methods of naturalism based on textual materials and evident in the decadent masterpiece À rebours (1884), but claims that decadent/mystic dream narrative, obsession with the past, and uncertainty are equally perceptible in his earlier naturalist works, such as Le Drageoir aux épices (1874). Part II analyses the literary techniques Huysmans self-reflectively employed in search of originality and novelty. It is argued that the naturalist opposition to the romantic novel is observable in practice in his unconventional use of a Preface, which is supposed to lead readers onwards but rather discourages them with pedantic literary or religious arguments, as in Là-bas (1891), En route (1895), and La Cathédrale (1898), while his endings are often circular, with predictable anticlimaxes. Huysmans's impassioned narrative, seeking to be meticulously truthful to reality, functions to replace melodramatic expectations with the banality and triviality of love affairs and allows dramatic components such as passion, danger, and death to be found only in a form of fantasy. Part III continues to examine the naturalist technique of antidrama, but now from the perspective of characterization. Huysmans's protagonists are enigmatic, ambivalent, and incompetent, and the absence of heroism becomes excessive, as in such antiromantic heroes as the two unattractive sisters, Désirée and Céline, in Les Sœurs Vatard (1879); a man of no intelligence and personality, Folantin, in À vau-l'eau (1882); the sickly aristocrat Des Esseintes in À rebours; and the hesitant and passive Drutal in the cycle of his four other novels. Part IV examines, from the perspective of his use of time and space, Huysmans's interiorizing of the naturalist thesis of mimesis to depict a subjective reality whose exteriority serves only to reflect the characters' inner workings, such as feelings of solitude, superiority, and deviation, together with a quest for serenity and sacredness. Part V concludes that Huysmans's polyphonic writing functions to create oscillation and ambiguity, which is argued to be his ingenious way of depicting the disorder of his contemporary society. This book is an insightful and comprehensive critique that contributes much to Huysmans studies; it will be useful to those who desire a new critical perspective that goes beyond the conventional categorizations of fin-de-siècle literature.

Dream narratives of Muslims' martyrdom: Constant and changing roles past and present.

Islamic literature is replete with many thousands of accounts of dreams, testifying to the great importance that Muslim societies have attached to dreaming throughout their history. Dreams are contained in the Qur’an and Hadith (the records of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions). They are also frequently present in biographies and histories, travel writing, and popular storytelling, among other genres. Medieval guides to dream images have survived in a large number of manuscripts and a more limited range of printed books. Today, there is evidence of a continuing strong belief among many Muslims worldwide that their dreams really matter, that they can show them the way to a prosperous future, warn them of impending dangers, and enable their moral and spiritual development. However, not all dreams are thought to have equal value, and this is reflected in the Arabic terminology for different types of dream. A dream may be designated hulm (pl. ahlam) when it is thought to be a product of the human brain or sent by the devil to cause distress and confusion, or it may be used as a general term for a dream. It is distinguished from the ru’ya (pl. ru’an), derived from the Arabic ra’a, “to see,” meaning a vision seen in either a dream or waking life. The ru’ya is the much-esteemed veridical dream sent by God. It is this true dreaming that is highly valued across Muslim regions, subcultures, and social strata. It is reflected, for example, in a survey of academics at the International Islamic University of Malaysia, who reported their belief in God-given true dreams and the influence that they had on their lives (Amanullah, 2009, pp. 106 –107). Further examples are provided in

Analysing the latent linguistic structure of American-English and German dream narratives

This supplement of the International Journal of Dream Research includes the abstracts of presenters who gave consentto the publishing. The abstracts are categorized into thematic groups and within the category sorted according to thelast name of the fi rst presenter. A name register at the end is also provided.

Dreaming in religion and pilgrimage: cognitive, evolutionary and cultural perspectives

Dreams are a universal human experience and they form cultural themes in folk traditions and religious rituals, such as pilgrimages and dream incubation. Dreams and dream beliefs are important since they contain representations of interacting supernatural agents that have full access to information of strategic importance to humans. The relevance of dreams often relates to the dreamers' concerns about the future and about health, and in this sense they show similarity with divination and oracles. This article suggests that religious dreaming is underpinned by an evolved system of threat simulation that is activated in dreaming processes; this is associated with a proclivity to evoke agent concepts and to use counterintuitive representations in cultural communication. It is argued that the use of a ‘hypersensitive agency detection device’ draws upon emotionally laden threat simulation in dreaming that makes reference to counterintuitive supernatural agents that are particularly relevant. This suggests that recalling religious dreams and the cultural transmission of dream reports, narratives and interpretations rely on representations of agents in general and the salience of counterintuitive agents in particular. Furthermore, the explanatory adequacy of ‘threat simulation theory’ is related to non-apprehensive religious dreams and ‘social simulation theory’. These discussions lead on to ethnographic descriptions of the connections between ‘supernaturalism’, pilgrimage, dream beliefs and dream incubation rituals in Nepalese Himalaya and Indian Bengal.

One Dream: Barack Obama, Race, and the American Dream

This essay examines the way in which Barack Obama, in his "More Perfect Union" address, dealt with the Rev. Wright controversy and confronted issues of race. We argue that Obama, faced with a controversy that jeopardized his candidacy, first explained the anger of both white and black Americans and then linked the problems of race in America to the American Dream, arguing that only by making that dream available to all citizens could those problems be remedied. We then draw implications for both dream narratives and for Obama's political discourse.

One Dream: Barack Obama, Race, and the American Dream

Abstract This essay examines the way in which Barack Obama, in his "More Perfect Union" address, dealt with the Rev. Wright controversy and confronted issues of race. We argue that Obama, faced with a controversy that jeopardized his candidacy, first explained the anger of both white and black Americans and then linked the problems of race in America to the American Dream, arguing that only by making that dream available to all citizens could those problems be remedied. We then draw implications for both dream narratives and for Obama’s political discourse.

Individual differences in adult attachment are systematically related to dream narratives

Self-reported individual differences in attachment insecurities (anxiety and avoidance) are sometimes assumed to tap only conscious mental processes, although many studies have found correlations between such measures and responses to the Thematic Apperception Test, the Rorschach Inkblot Test, and diverse laboratory measures of unconscious mental processes. Dreams offer another route into the unconscious, as Freud famously claimed: a route found useful in psychotherapy. In this study, approximately 1000 dreams reported by 68 young adults who kept dream diaries for a month were analyzed using the Core Conflictual Relationships Theme method, and the themes were examined in relation to (a) scores on the Experiences in Close Relationships measure of attachment anxiety and avoidance and (b) stress experienced the day before each dream. In line with attachment theory and previous research, attachment-related avoidance predicted avoidant wishes and negative representations of other people in dreams. Attachment anxiety predicted wishes for interpersonal closeness, especially in dreams following stressful days, and negative representations of self and both positive and negative representations of others, with negative representations being more common in dreams following stressful days.

Bureaucracy of Dreams: Surrealist Socialism and Surrealist Awakening in Ismail Kadare's The Palace of Dreams

Ani Kokobobo addresses the novel The Palace of Dreams (1981) by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, with a particular focus on the larger significance of the novel's dream project. Through fictional processes of dream collection, selection, and interpretation, Kadare meditates on two twentieth-century movements that either overtly or covertly incorporated dreams in their ideological platforms: surrealism and socialism. Kokobobo posits that as a political and aesthetic category the dream serves Kadare as the ideal epistemological vessel for investigating the interrelatedness of socialism and surrealism. Throughout the novel, Kadare emphasizes socialism's Utopian inclinations, the dislocation of political decisions from political realities in this system, and the mutual disturbance of both reality and the imagination that such a dislocation produces. At the same time, the dream narrative helps him launch a surrealist poetics and metapoetically counter the damage dealt to the imagination by political realities.

Waking and dreaming: Related but structurally independent. Dream reports of congenitally paraplegic and deaf-mute persons

Models of dream analysis either assume a continuum of waking and dreaming or the existence of two dissociated realities. Both approaches rely on different methodology. Whereas continuity models are based on content analysis, discontinuity models use a structural approach. In our study, we applied both methods to test specific hypotheses about continuity or discontinuity. We contrasted dream reports of congenitally deaf-mute and congenitally paraplegic individuals with those of non-handicapped controls. Continuity theory would predict that either the deficit itself or compensatory experiences would surface in the dream narrative. We found that dream form and content of sensorially limited persons was indifferent from those of non-handicapped controls. Surprisingly, perceptual representations, even of modalities not experienced during waking, were quite common in the dream reports of our handicapped subjects. Results are discussed with respect to feedforward mechanisms and protoconsciousness theory of dreaming.