Nature Of Dreams Research Articles

Anthropological dialogue of E. Fromm with Z. Freud and other Western philosophers (modern methodological conceptualization)

Along with reading the works of philosophers of the past and reflecting on their logic and content, it is important for modern humanities to identify the difference in their standpoints on the fundamental issues of human existence. The given article addresses these issues exemplified by the dialogue in letters between E. Fromm and Z. Freud. It investigates the difference between the two philosophers' views on the problems of rationalism and irrationalism, free will, good and evil in human nature, the specificity of human aggressiveness, and the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. The article also examines the similarities and differences in the ways the thinkers approach the problem of human fear, the role of childhood in a person's adult life, manifestations of narcissism, the correlation of biological and social factors in the process of character formation, the nature of dreams in their works. In most cases, Fromm's position, focused on "libidinal charm", is recognized by Fromm as limited and supplemented by spirituality and sociality. At the same time, in a number of cases, Fromm's criticism is mild, and sometimes it shows strong, justified disagreement with Freud. It is noted that the dialogue of thinkers is interesting as highly intellectual communication on universal human issues, clearly reflecting the personal and scientific portraits of the authors for a modern researcher in the field of psychology, philosophy, sociology, and theoretical and practical education. There is a stated methodological value of the dialogue in question: through the opportunity offered to a reader to identify the correctness of the methods used: a) meaningful comparison of scientific positions; b) interpretation of quotes of the criticized opponent; c) defining the opponent's consideration as incomplete, unreasonably narrow, not reflecting the magnitude of the object under consideration; d) exposing the narrowed analysis perspective of the criticized author in a new integrity; e) analysis of the possibilities of applying the law of the excluded middle to particular cases; f) the possibility, based on a logical-meaningful synthesis, to identify those problems that have escaped the notice of the criticizing author.

Connection of individual typological features of personality with nature of dreams

Objective. To study the influence of the temperament, anxiety level, intro-extraversion index, the nature of emotions, the level of happiness and the presence of pathologies of sleep physiology in the individual on the frequency of dream production and their figurative content.
 Materials and methods. The research involved 100 respondents students of E.A. Vagner Perm State Medical University, the average age was 22.5 4.5 years. The study was conducted through anonymous questionnaires using the following personality questionnaires and psychological tests: Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Comprehensive Sociometric Test: Emotions, Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ), Comprehensive Test for Detection of Sleep Disorders.
 Results. It was found that in 37,7 % of cases out of 100,0 %, the imaginative content of dreams and the frequency of their production directly depend on the temperament of the individual, the level of anxiety affects dreams only in 50,0 % of cases out of 100,0 %. The intro-extraversion index has a significant impact on the nature of dreams and manifests its effect in 61,6 % out of 100,0 %. The complete dependence of the imaginative content of dreams on the quality of emotions is observed in 57.0 % of cases; inversely proportional dependence is noted in 43.0 % of cases. It was determined that the level of happiness has a natural effect on dreams in 66.0 % of cases. Sleep disorders can affect both negatively and positively the imaginative content of dreams and their quantitative production. Assessment of the multifactorial influence of the students' psycho-emotional state showed that the most important role in the cumulative effect on sleep and dreams is played by the level of anxiety and temperament.
 Conclusions. Changes in the parameters of dreams are a consequence of the multifactorial interaction of individual psychoemotional characteristics and typological characteristics of the personality. Determination of temperament and registration of the level of anxiety of the individual can contribute to the prediction of the overall picture of dreams for use in psychological and psychiatric practice.

The Nature of Dreams in Persons with Neurological Disorders

A theoretical analysis of the features of dreams in people who have suffered a stroke is presented in the ar­ticle. The content of dreams may indicate the presence of somatic abnormalities, but in a distorted, symbolic form. In stroke, sleep disorders are a negative predictor of the effectiveness of the rehabili­tation stage. The results of empirical study of the characteristics of dreams in stroke patients (10 men, 10 women aged 21 to 65, average age-47.2) and in conditionally healthy people (7 men, 13 women aged 28 to 56, average age - 46.6) showed that the quality of sleep is worse in the group with somatic disorders in comparison with conditionally healthy people, and it also revealed differences in the content of dreams. In the dreams of people with somatic disorders, the desire to change their physical or mental state is manifested.

Nightmares in patients with insomnia

Studies show a high frequency of comorbidity of insomnia and nightmares, which aggravate and chronicle each other. The mechanisms of their mutual influence are different. Insomnia changes the nature of dreams, both indirectly through emotional hyperactivation characteristic of insomnia, and as a result of frequent awakenings. However, frequent recurring unpleasant and frightening dreams can themselves increase the frequency of nocturnal awakenings and worsen the quality of sleep. The comorbidity of insomnia and nightmares should be taken into account when choosing a therapeutic approach in this category of patients. Priority are drugs that do not cause nightmares as a side effect, as well as psychotherapy.

Multiple Selves and the Nature of Dreaming

ABSTRACT This article considers Yadin’s concept of an inner voice in dreams (this issue). It explores ways this voice might be similar to and different from varieties of ordinary thinking. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming is contemplated in order to ascertain the extent to which inner voice dreams can be regarded as lucid. Sterba’s two egos (experiencing and observing) and Yadin’s reflecting/judging/guiding inner voice are merged and expanded to reveal a multitude of selves cooperating under the executive direction of a superordinate self to form a Dream Team that instigates, creates, and benefits from our amazing nocturnal dramas. Implications of a comparative-integrative model of dreaming for understanding whether we are one self and/or many are discussed.

Clinical observation of the combined use of propofol and etomidate in painless gastroscopy.

This study is aims to compare the anesthetic safety of propofol combined with etomidate for painless gastroscopy. Three hundred patients undergoing painless gastroscopy were randomly assigned to P, PE1, and PE2 groups. Patients were anesthetized with propofol (P group) or propofol combined with etomidate (volume ratio 1: 1, PE1 group; volume ratio 2: 1, PE2 group). The hemodynamics and adverse reactions were observed. The sleep quality satisfaction and nature of dreams were recorded. Compared with pre-anesthesia, the mean arterial pressure and heart rate of the 3 groups were significantly slower during the examination and at the end of the examination. PE1 group had a higher incidence of muscle spasm, body moving, choking, and deglutition. The incidence of hypoxemia and injection pain was higher in P group. P and PE2 group had higher sleep quality satisfaction and dream incidence after awaking. However, there was no difference in the nature of dreams among 3 groups. Our data indicate that the combination of 10 ml 1.0% propofol and 5 ml 0.2% etomidate for painless gastroscopy reduces adverse reactions while not affecting the patients respiratory function. Moreover, it is safe and effective, which is worthy of clinical application and promotion.

Aphantasia, imagination and dreaming

Aphantasia is a recently discovered disorder characterised by the total incapacity to generate visual forms of mental imagery. This paper proposes that aphantasia raises important theoretical concerns for the ongoing debate in the philosophy and science of consciousness over the nature of dreams. Recent studies of aphantasia and its neurobehavioral correlates reveal that the majority of aphantasics, whilst unable to produce visual imagery while awake, nevertheless retain the capacity to experience rich visual dreams. This finding constitutes a novel explanandum for theories of dreaming. Specifically, I argue that the recent dream reports of aphantasics constitute an empirical challenge to the emerging family of views which claim that dreams are essentially imaginative experiences, constitutively involving the kinds of mental imagery which aphantasics, ex-hypothesi, lack. After presenting this challenge in the context of Jonathan Ichikawa’s recent arguments for this view, I argue that this empirical challenge may be overcome if the imagination theorist abandons Ichikawa’s account of dreaming in favour of a modified version. This involves the claim that dreams are essentially inactive and constitutively involve non voluntary forms of imagination. I conclude with a suggestion for further research which can test the viability of this alternative hypothesis, and move the debate forward.

Key Concepts in Dream Research: Cognition and Consciousness Are Inherently Linked, but Do No Not Control "Control"!

Whilst lucid dreaming (LD) is defined as being aware of dreaming whilst dreaming, a misconception exists in the public domain as a referral to controlling dream content and plot (Neuhausler et al., 2018). This misconception reflects a number of widely-held beliefs about the nature of dreaming, which in part this commentary will seek to explain and rectify. Furthermore, the aim of this piece is to suggest definitions of key concepts in the study of lucid and non-lucid dreaming concerning control, cognition, and consciousness. Whilst superficially there seems overlap between each of these, independent processes, and associated experiences underpin them.

Topoanaliza autobiograficzno-symboliczna jako metoda badania (nie)dokończonych marzeń

Piasecka Małgorzata, Topoanaliza autobiograficzno-symboliczna jako metoda badania (nie)dokończonychmarzeń [Autobiographical-symbolic Topoanalysis as a Method of Examining (Un)Finished Dreams]. Studia Edukacyjne nr 56, 2020, Poznań 2020, pp. 401-419. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 1233-6688. DOI: 10.14746/se.2020.56.22The article is a presentation of an original research project on dreams. The author, being aware of the nature of dreams as the phenomena difficult to grasp empirically, tries to find a subtle way of describing them. The author does not take into account utopian dreams. On the contrary, she looks for real dreams experienced on the paths of life. Retaining the oneiric nature of dreams, she has constructed a research method and called it an autobiographical and symbolic topoanalysis. The construction of the method is preceded by an outline of the process of conceptualization, i.e. the adoption of appropriate theoretical background, conceptual instrumentation, and research strategy. The author assumes a spatial meta-order of analyses by pointing to a non-binary space, not fully decentralized, as a possible context of making dreams a reality. Important clues and assets from which she creatively draws are: the concept of M. Lanie-Bayle’s biographical space-time; the vestige et vertige concept, i.e. a trace and an inverted trace; the concept of the poetics of dreaming and the Four Elements by G. Bachelard; the concept of D. Demetrios’s autobiography; E. Rybicka’s geo-poetics in the contemporary literary discourse. Finally, the author describes the methodological stage of autobiographical and symbolic topoanalysis and presents a concrete example of its application.

The Dream World of Wonderland

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll creates a whimsical, alternative reality based on arbitrary rules and nonsense to express his ideas regarding the nature of dreams. While the original illustrations of the text were created by 19th-century English artist and satirist John Tenniel, famed surrealist Salvador Dalí provides a more expressionistic and psychological exploration of the mind through his own illustrations of Carroll’s work in the 1969 Maegenus Press edition of Alice. In order to understand Dalí’s interpretation of the text, it is important to trace his interests in dreams back to its origins in Sigmund Freud and Surrealism, which came to light during the early 20th-century and focused on new forms of expression that sought to unhinge the supposed creativity trapped in the unconscious mind. Although Carroll, Dalí, and Freud were all from different time periods, their individual beliefs about the nature of dreams allow for a better understanding of how to analyze Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a whole.

KITAB AL-MANAM

This paper tries to study an edition of Ibn Abi Dunya's work, entitled Kitab al-Manam, edited by Leah Kinberg. This paper also aims to deal with the nature of Islamic classical texts and tries to examine the existing edited form of the text that can be scientifically accepted in recently scholarly circumstances.
 Kitab al-Manam is one of which has attracted many scholars due to its popular contents about dream. It is a collection of 350 narratives. Most of these narratives tell readers about information transmitted through dream. The nature of dream is very dominant in the whole of its content, nearly 327 narratives. Kinberg explains in the beginning of her edition that those dreams are mostly short and follow a set of basic patterns, which is common patterns in relating dreams: 'motifs and formulae·. Viewed from its main nature, Kitab al-Manam, as a whole, is a compilation of traditions drawn from early sources prior to Ibn Abi Dunya’. Somehow, this was an important work since that we hardly can find explanations about dreams prior to Ibn Abi Du'nya’. That's why, the populariry of Ibn Abi Du'nya’ was later acknowledged by many scholars especially those concerned with the nature of dreams in Islamic eschatology.
 Key Words: Kitab al-Manam, Ibn Abi Du'nya', dreams, critical edition

Autobiographical memory and hyperassociativity in the dreaming brain: implications for memory consolidation in sleep.

In this paper we argue that autobiographical memory (AM) activity across sleep and wake can provide insight into the nature of dreaming, and vice versa. Activated memories within the sleeping brain reflect one’s personal life history (autobiography). They can appear in largely fragmentary forms and differ from conventional manifestations of episodic memory. Autobiographical memories in dreams can be sampled from non-REM as well as REM periods, which contain fewer episodic references and become more bizarre across the night. Salient fragmented memory features are activated in sleep and re-bound with fragments not necessarily emerging from the same memory, thus de-contextualizing those memories and manifesting as experiences that differ from waking conceptions. The constructive nature of autobiographical recall further encourages synthesis of these hyper-associated images into an episode via recalling and reporting dreams. We use a model of AM to account for the activation of memories in dreams as a reflection of sleep-dependent memory consolidation processes. We focus in particular on the hyperassociative nature of AM during sleep.

Such stuff as REM and NREM dreams are made on? An elaboration

AbstractI argued that rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming is elaborative emotional encoding for episodic memories, sharing many features with the ancient art of memory (AAOM). In this framework, during non–rapid eye movement (NREM), dream scenes enable junctions between episodic networks in the cortex and are retained by the hippocampus as indices for retrieval. The commentaries, which varied in tone from patent enthusiasm to edgy scepticism, fall into seven natural groups: debate over the contribution of the illustrative dream and disputes over the nature of dreaming (discussed in sect. R1); how the framework extends to creativity, psychopathology, and sleep disturbances (sect. R2); the compatibility of the REM dream encoding function with emotional de-potentiation (sect. R3); scepticism over similarities between REM dreaming and the AAOM (sect. R4); the function of NREM dreams in the sleep cycle (sect. R5); the fit of the junction hypothesis with current knowledge of cortical networks (sect. R6); and whether the hypothesis is falsifiable (including methodological challenges and evidence against the hypothesis) (sect. R7). Although the groups in sections R1–R6 appear quite disparate, I argue they all follow from the associative nature of dreaming.

“Parted Eyes” in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects the complex, even contrary perspectives on dreams prevailing during the Early Modern period. Characters from different worlds—fairies, royalty, and workmen—all discourse on the nature of dreams, and the hilarity of the play is the way these characters and their views collide. But comedy can also put provocative questions to the audience. From one perspective, dreams have an independent, supernatural reality, and from another, they are “vain fantasy.” Likewise, at one moment the audience is caught up in illusion, and at the next, the audience reflects, judges, laughs and applauds from a distance. At the end of the play, after all the conflicts are resolved, the mortal characters leave the stage and the fairies appear and celebrate with music and dance. Then, when they leave, the actor who has played Puck steps out of his role and speaks directly to the audience, breaking the spell of drama to conclude the play. Not only in the epilogue but throughout, the audience has been caught up in illusion and also detached, conscious that the play is a play. Questions about the the phenomenon of “lucid dreams” are part of the comedy of this play and remain unanswered.

Dream Orientation as a Function of Hyperactivating and Deactivating Attachment Strategies

This study establishes a connection between adult attachment style and attitudinal orientation toward dreams. Presumably, the frequently emotional nature of dreams would lead adults high on attachment anxiety to construe their dreams as more important and, consequently, to engage with them more extensively than those low on attachment anxiety, whereas adults high on attachment avoidance (compared to those low on avoidance) would disengage from their dreams and minimize their importance. In the present study 173 women and 79 men participating via the internet reported three dreams and completed questionnaires assessing their attachment style, beliefs and attitudes about dreams, and dream experiences. Asexpected, attachment anxiety predicted high involvement with dreams, while attachment avoidance generally predicted dismissiveness toward dreams.

Apt performance and epistemic value

Ernie Sosa is without doubt one of the towering intellectual figures of contemporary epistemology. Indeed, it is difficult to think of an area of epistemology where he has not made a distinctive and highly influential contribution. Moreover, I think it is fair to say––and this is the real mark of one of the greats––that the way younger epistemologists like myself instinctively approach epistemological topics is largely informed by his contribution to the subject. Sosa’s new book, A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, the first of two volumes, covers many of the issues in epistemology that his work is associated with, and I am delighted to be able to comment on this book here. Given the breadth of topics covered in this work––from the nature of dreams, to intuitions and the problem of the criterion––I will not try to offer a critique of the book as a whole. Instead, I want to focus on one key thread, which is the important contribution that Sosa makes to the debate regarding epistemic value by appeal to a central notion in his work, that of apt performance.

Can Dreams Within Dreams Serve as Metaphor for Modern Life Itself?: Commentary on Paper by Hilary Hoge

The social nature of dreaming is discussed. Those few remembered and shared dreams (out of the totality of experienced and soon-forgotten dreams) are eventually shaped by the particular culture that reads into dreams its own way of viewing private psychological experience. Psychoanalysis is one such culture. It is recommended that the dream, on its own terms and in its own images and stories, be allowed to lead the way in psychotherapy. The significance of the creations of the mind asleep is discussed in relation to Freud's and Jung's mission to create a depth therapy for the psychological maladies attendant to life in modern Western culture. Dr. Hoge's contribution is significant in its subtle and intelligent evocation of the rich complexities of the world of dreams. Her use of the dream within the dream opens into a consideration of the sleeping mind's capacity for play and for stretching the boundaries of psychotherapy. Her discussion of the intermixing of subjectivities in therapeutic dream discussion (“Was it her dream or mine?”) leads to a consideration of the relationship between psychoanalytic work with dreams and ancient healing methods that often include an interest in the healer's own dreams as locus of treatment. Finally, there is a discussion of the relation of dreams to the emerging electronic virtual world which replaces the real and natural world with its own designs. In such a world, the dream within a dream may serve as a metaphor for modern life itself.

The Nature of Dreams: The Making of a Naturalist

The Nature of Dreams: The Making of a Naturalist

A New Beginning for Empirical Dream Research

William Domhoff's The Scientific Study of Dreams breaks new ground in the field, not by proposing grandiose, premature answers to questions about the nature of dreams but rather by showing us with unprecedented clarity and scope where we have erred in the past and allowing us to start over again. In a careful, reasoned critique, Domhoff demonstrates the shortcomings of the dominant dream theories that haunted the last century. Based on a thorough examination of converging evidence from neurophysiological, cognitive, and content analysis approaches to the study of dreams, he then lays the groundwork for the construction of future theories of the dreaming process from a neurocognitive perspective. Although a new, complete theory is not presented here, its insightful and unbiased as sessment of where dream research stands at this time should make The Scientific Study of Dreams required reading for everyone interested an empirical approach to understanding dreaming. With the publication of Freud's Interpretation ofDreamsin 1900, popular thought about the nature of dreams became centered around the idea that our dreams are disguised wishes originating from unconscious influences in early childhood. Dreams allowed us to hallucinatorily gratify socially unacceptable wishes repressed in our unconscious, and the transformative process of dreamwork ensured that these themes were well enough disguised in our dream content to allow us to sleep through the night, without being startled awake. Until the early 1950s, this psychoanalytic conception dominated dream psychology and was explored largely using the same techniques of clinical observation that led Freud to the formula tion of his original theory. The modem era of empirical research on dreaming was kicked off in the 1950s with Aserinsky and Kleitman's (1953) groundbreaking discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. As a graduate student working on a summer project, Eugene Aserinsky serendipitously discovered that about every 90 min throughout the night, humans go through short periods during which their eyes dart back and forth underneath their eyelids, accompanied by dramatic increases in brain activity as measured by electroencephalography. Soon it was reported that sub jects were much more likely to report a dream when awakened from REM sleep

The Victorian Supernatural (review)

Reviewed by: The Victorian Supernatural James Finley (bio) Nicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell, The Victorian Supernatural (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. xv+ 305, $65.00 cloth. The various ways "Victorians were haunted by the supernatural" (1) is the subject of this fine collection of interdisciplinary essays, part of the Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture series. The topics range across a spectrum that includes Spiritualism, science, dreams, ghost stories, religious mysticism, and reincarnation, but the broader theme of how Victorian literature and art (both "high" and "popular") reflected cultural understandings of the supernatural is kept consistently in sight. Editors Nicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett, and Pamela Thurschwell (contributors all) have organized the volume into six thematic sections which, in the most general terms only, link the essays. The topics covered, as suggested above, run a broad gamut; fresh approaches and an abundance of unique insights make each essay an engaging read. Part I, "Supernatural Science," contains essays by Richard Noakes and Louise Henson on the broad fascination with and controversies over the supernatural in early to mid-Victorian Britain. Noakes argues that the simplistic dichotomies often used to describe debates over supernatural phenomena (i.e., "science versus Spiritualism" or "natural versus supernatural" [39]) are inadequate for rendering the complexity of the controversies. [End Page 108] Complementing this perspective, Henson treats the journalism and fiction of Charles Dickens as a cipher for "how broadly the subject of ghosts was defined in the early Victorian period" (61). In Part II, "Invisible Women," Eve M. Lynch, through a reading of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's ghost stories of the 1860s and 70s, discovers parallels between the two spectral presences of the Victorian home, servants and spirits. Pamela Thurschwell, in a reading of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876), asserts the depiction of male and female characters' psychic abilities in that novel splits the narrative along patriarchal and feminine lines. Both essays emphasize the "invisibility" of marginalized females in Victorian society. With "Raising the Dead," Part III, Christian themes are explored by both Adam Roberts and Colin Cruise, writing on Robert Browning and Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo), respectively. Roberts posits that Browning's dramatic monologues, which give voice to the dead, constitute "an aesthetics of resuscitation" (15), while Cruise, in his readings of Rolfe's "Toto" stories, claims that Rolfe's conversion to Catholicism kindled in him a fascination for magic that he could weave into these stories of a boy medium who gives voice to the dead. In Part IV, "Envisioning the Unseen," the focus is on imaging the supernatural, and Nicola Bown uses John Anster Fitzgerald's 1858 painting The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of as a springboard for inquiring into the Victorians' apparent lack of pictorial images of dreaming, and for examining, generally, Victorians' uncertain attitude toward the nature of dreams. Likewise, Michaela Giebelhausen considers Victorian artists Holman Hunt's and William Dyce's representation of the supernatural (or lack thereof) in their respective renderings of Christ. Part V, "Imperial Occult," features essays by Roger Luckhurst and Carolyn Burdett that deal with the relationship between British imperialism and the understanding of occult phenomena. Luckhurst focuses, in part, on the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, which collected accounts of paranormal experiences from all over the empire; he argues that "At the edges of Western rule, the supernatural clearly did function as a useful currency to articulate encounters" (212) and locates cases where "colonial contexts inform the categories of psychical research" (16). Turning toward popular literature, Burdett argues that the novels of H. Rider Haggard (particularly the four revolving around the character Ayesha, "She") reveal how the "supernatural played its part in the political culture of the period," and how, in the case of Haggard particularly, the adventure writer could use his "popular romances to consolidate an image of the modern future based on the values of Toryism and Anglicanism" (218). Finally, in Part VI, the one essay by Geoffrey Gilbert points beyond [End Page 109] the Victorian supernatural toward a "Haunted Modernism" (the section's heading) with a complex argument that delineates, via readings of Henry James' "The Jolly Corner" and references to Virginia Woolf's "Mr...