Repetitive Dreams Research Articles

Dreamscapes of Belonging : Draft, based on the presentation at the IAJS Conference 2023, work in progress

Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR) is a distinctive methodological framework that explores the intersection of analytical psychology and the arts. It primarily utilizes Jung's theories of the psyche, integrating these with artistic processes to investigate and express unconscious dynamics. Susan Rowland, a pivotal figure in this field, has significantly advanced the understanding of how Jungian theories can be applied within art-based research (Rowland, 2023). Her contributions elucidate how artistic expressions act as mediums through which the unconscious can be explored and articulated, thereby offering profound insights into both individual and collective unconscious processes. The objectives of Jungian Art-Based Research are manifold. Firstly, JABR aims to provide a methodological approach that allows researchers and practitioners to delve deeper into the symbolic and transformative potential of art. This is achieved through the engagement of the unconscious in the creation and interpretation of art, thereby fostering a holistic understanding of the psyche. Secondly, JABR seeks to expand the scope of psychological inquiry by incorporating artistic expressions as legitimate sources of psychological data. Lastly, it aspires to foster a dialogue between psychology and art, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration that can enrich both fields. By integrating analytical psychology with artistic creativity, JABR contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the human experience, offering valuable perspectives that challenge conventional research paradigms. This paper presents a personal journey through the application of Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR), initiated by attending a course by Susan Rowlands. It delves into the transformative experience of exploring the multiverse of dreams and their impact on the author's professional and personal development. The exploration began with the author’s repetitive dreams, characterized by detailed urban landscapes, serving as the primary material for research. By physically mapping these dreamscapes and integrating various symbolic materials, the author engaged in a deep, introspective process, highlighting the non-linear and spiraling nature of JABR. This journey further intertwined with reflections on identity, homelessness, and the longing for a sense of belonging, amplified by historical and cultural dislocations. Through spontaneous dance and subsequent reflections, the author confronts the disillusionment with idealized spaces and faces the reality of changing perspectives and attachments. The paper concludes by pondering the broader implications of our attachment to the Earth, suggesting that our efforts to save it might be hindered by our need to name and possess, rather than embrace its intrinsic, unnamed existence. Through a Jungian lens, the author proposes a reevaluation of our relationship with the planet, advocating for a detachment from specific names to foster a more universal and sustainable connection.

Dreamscapes of Belonging

Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR) is a distinctive methodological framework that explores the intersection of analytical psychology and the arts. It primarily utilizes Jung's theories of the psyche, integrating these with artistic processes to investigate and express unconscious dynamics. Susan Rowland, a pivotal figure in this field, has significantly advanced the understanding of how Jungian theories can be applied within art-based research (Rowland, 2023). Her contributions elucidate how artistic expressions act as mediums through which the unconscious can be explored and articulated, thereby offering profound insights into both individual and collective unconscious processes. The objectives of Jungian Art-Based Research are manifold. Firstly, JABR aims to provide a methodological approach that allows researchers and practitioners to delve deeper into the symbolic and transformative potential of art. This is achieved through the engagement of the unconscious in the creation and interpretation of art, thereby fostering a holistic understanding of the psyche. Secondly, JABR seeks to expand the scope of psychological inquiry by incorporating artistic expressions as legitimate sources of psychological data. Lastly, it aspires to foster a dialogue between psychology and art, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration that can enrich both fields. By integrating analytical psychology with artistic creativity, JABR contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the human experience, offering valuable perspectives that challenge conventional research paradigms. This paper presents a personal journey through the application of Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR), initiated by attending a course by Susan Rowlands. It delves into the transformative experience of exploring the multiverse of dreams and their impact on the author's professional and personal development. The exploration began with the author’s repetitive dreams, characterized by detailed urban landscapes, serving as the primary material for research. By physically mapping these dreamscapes and integrating various symbolic materials, the author engaged in a deep, introspective process, highlighting the non-linear and spiraling nature of JABR. This journey further intertwined with reflections on identity, homelessness, and the longing for a sense of belonging, amplified by historical and cultural dislocations. Through spontaneous dance and subsequent reflections, the author confronts the disillusionment with idealized spaces and faces the reality of changing perspectives and attachments. The paper concludes by pondering the broader implications of our attachment to the Earth, suggesting that our efforts to save it might be hindered by our need to name and possess, rather than embrace its intrinsic, unnamed existence. Through a Jungian lens, the author proposes a reevaluation of our relationship with the planet, advocating for a detachment from specific names to foster a more universal and sustainable connection.

Dreamscapes of Belonging

This paper presents a personal journey through the application of Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR), initiated by attending a course by Susan Rowlands. It delves into the transformative experience of exploring the multiverse of dreams and their impact on the author's professional and personal development. The exploration began with the author’s repetitive dreams, characterized by detailed urban landscapes, serving as the primary material for research. By physically mapping these dreamscapes and integrating various symbolic materials, the author engaged in a deep, introspective process, highlighting the non-linear and spiraling nature of JABR. This journey further intertwined with reflections on identity, homelessness, and the longing for a sense of belonging, amplified by historical and cultural dislocations. Through spontaneous dance and subsequent reflections, the author confronts the disillusionment with idealized spaces and faces the reality of changing perspectives and attachments. The paper concludes by pondering the broader implications of our attachment to the Earth, suggesting that our efforts to save it might be hindered by our need to name and possess, rather than embrace its intrinsic, unnamed existence. Through a Jungian lens, the author proposes a reevaluation of our relationship with the planet, advocating for a detachment from specific names to foster a more universal and sustainable connection.

The effects of the posttraumatic stress and general health status on paediatric burns and their sleep habits

BackgroundBurns are serious injuries that can require hospitalization and have physical and emotional sequelae. Sleep disturbance can occur after trauma as evidenced by posttraumatic stress symptoms such as re-experiencing of a trauma with repetitive dreams, memories and flashbacks. This area has been minimally examined with pediatric burn survivors; therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of posttraumatic stress and general health on sleep habits of pediatric burn survivors from. MethodThis is a correlational descriptive study. Its sample included 7–18-year-old inpatients at the burn clinic of a university hospital from January to November 2019. This study used the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index, the General Health Questionnaire (12) and the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire for data collection. ResultsOf the participants, 58.6% were male, 46.5% were primary school students, and 62.6% had no diseases other than their burns. 20.2% of the children had epilepsy, 14.2% had diabetes and 3% had pneumonia. Of the child burn victims, 45.5% were brought to the hospital because of contact with fire. All of them had first-degree burns, 59.6% had second-degree burns, and 80.8% had third-degree burns. After their burns, infections developed in 20.2% during trauma and in 43.4% during burn treatment. A structural equation model indicated that the child burn victims’ general health perceptions did not significantly affect their sleep habits (p > 0.05). A significant correlation was found between the children’s posttraumatic stress disorder and their sleep habits (p < 0.05). Posttraumatic stress disorder explained 7.2% of their sleep habits. A positive and significant correlation was found between the children’s general health perceptions and posttraumatic stress disorder (r = 0.74, p < 0.05). ConclusionBurns of any kind can cause posttraumatic stress, sleep disorders and impairment of health status in children.

Face the waves of emotion in the sea of the unconscious: Focusing on the symbolism of the sea and the waves

The purpose of this study was to examine the symbolism of the sea and waves, focusing on these symbols in the dreams and sand trays during the female client’s sandplay therapy. The client had dreamt about the sea repeatedly since childhood, so her repetitive dreams about the sea were analyzed during the sandplay sessions. She realized that the deep abyss of the sea was linked to her unconsciousness. Through the dynamic fluctuation of the waves, the emotions that she had suppressed became shaken, and it brought out her anger. As becoming aware of her suppressed emotions, she was able to heal herself. The repeated appearance of the sea in the sand trays connected her to the unconscious and led her to integration and wholeness. She made the choice of recharging her energy for love in the sea and returning to her life. The researcher could understand that it was the message of the sea to love herself and her life and live an authentic life of self-care proudly.

English Language Notes Edited Collection: “Trauma and Horror”

315 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE WORKS CITED Davis, Heather. “Toxic Progeny: The Plastisphere and Other Queer Futures,” philoSOPHIA 5.2 (2015): 231-50. del Ray, Lester. “Helen O’Loy.” 1938. Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Vol. 1 (192964 ). Ed. Robert Silverberg. New York: Orb: 42-52. Padgett, Lewis. “The Proud Robot.” 1943. Robots Have No Tails. New York: Gnome, 1952. 7-52. English Language Notes Edited Collection: “Trauma and Horror.” Later nineteenth-century psychology appropriated the medical term trauma, used to denote a wound derived from the violent piercing of the skin, to describe a violent breaching of subjectivity. The event instantiating psychic trauma is so devastating that the ego’s defenses are broken down, and the subject is powerless to resist the overwhelming impressions that flood its barriers, or to manage the swell of affective distress that results. The abreaction (working-through) of trauma should be furthered by the most painstakingly accurate representation of its inception and effects. Yet contemporary trauma theorists have described the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of a “true” representation of traumatic events, given that the very experience of trauma involves the derangement or shattering of the subjective apparatus designed to process it. Traumatic events can only be understood belatedly and imperfectly; they give rise to repetitive dreams and uncontrollable flashbacks and generate narratives characterized by disjunction and distortion, including the interpolation of fantasy elements. The most faithful accounts of traumatic events, perversely, can only be rendered by means of narrative breaks and refusals, hyperbole, and other modes of distortion, as well as displacement at one or more removes. The horror genre can be said to generate just such perversely accurate representations of trauma. The genre specializes in hyperbolic scenarios of human subjects in the throes of excruciating physical and psychic pain, and develops these scenarios by means of hallucinatory narrative sequences. Moreover, the genre offers up trauma as a spectacle to be consumed and even enjoyed. This special issue of English Language Notes invites essays that explore the horror genre’s strategies for representing personal and historical trauma, its ability (or failure, or refusal) to abreact trauma, and its paradoxical appeal as a popular genre devoted to the unpleasure of shock, violence, and psychic disorientation. Other topics might include eco-horror and the postapocalypse from Mary Shelley to the Strugatsky brothers to Jeff VanderMeer; horror’s eliciting of “empathic unsettlement” (LaCapra 2001), as opposed to aversion, disgust, or other forms of denial; or critique of horror as an exploitative or “pornographic” genre, particularly in its representations of war, genocide, and other large-scale atrocities. Horror may overlap or intersect with other fantastic genres such as Gothic, Science Fiction, Kaidan, the Weird, and so forth. We welcome discussions of literature, film, television, graphic novels, visual arts, music, and other cultural forms, as well as essays that discuss 316 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) national and/or regional horror traditions as well as individual texts. Essays are due by September 1, 2020. They can be of varying lengths, including position papers and longer research articles. Use Chicago-style formatting and submit double-spaced, 12-point font, .docx files to the special-issue editor, Kelly Hurley . Please omit identifying information from all pages except the cover page, as we use a blind-review format. Send all inquiries to Kelly Hurley.—Kelly Hurley, University of Colorado at Boulder Technoculture: Call for Contributions. An online journal of technology in society, Technoculture invites submissions for its tenth-year anniversary issue. We seek critical essays and creative works from a range of academic disciplines that focus on cultural studies of technology—particularly the future of the study of technology and culture. We are interested in ideas that push beyond contemporary American culture and its fascination with computers. For the critical articles in this upcoming issue, we are especially interested in such questions as these: What is the future of the study of technology and culture? How can scholars of technoculture approach the past and/or the future of technology and technological advances? What new methodologies might be useful and how might scholars’ findings best be disseminated? What should critical and creative scholars recover and/or leave behind? How can authors push the boundaries...

Therapeutic progress in repetitive dreams: A diachronic study of a clinical case

This paper presents the results of an inquiry into the relationship between changes in a patient's associations and manifest and latent contents of repetitive dreams, and his progress in the psychoanalytic process. The patient's repetitive dreams were studied for a whole year by way of a categorical analysis of 43 dreams and associations, and the four quarters of the treatment were compared. After analyzing the information on all the repetitive dreams, therapeutic progress was identified in the fourth and last quarter of the treatment. This research shows that repetitive dreams are a useful tool to assess patients’ achievements in the psychoanalytic process.

Conflict Nightmares and Trauma in Aceh

In both the Acehnese and Indonesian languages, there is no single lexical term for "nightmare." And yet findings from a large field research project in Aceh that examined post traumatic experience during Aceh's nearly 30-year rebellion against the Indonesian state and current mental distress revealed a rich variety of dream narratives that connect directly and indirectly to respondents' past traumatic experiences. The results reported below suggest that even in a society that has a very different cultural ideology about dreams, where "nightmares" as such are not considered dreams but rather the work of mischievous spirits called jin, they are still a significant part of the trauma process. We argue that it is productive to distinguish between terrifying and repetitive dreams that recreate the traumatic moment and the more ordinary varieties of dreams that Acehnese reported to their interviewers. Nightmares that refer back to conflict events do not appear as an elaborated feature of trauma as the condition is understood by people in Aceh, but when asked further about their dreams, respondents who reported symptoms suggestive of PTSD were more likely to report PTSD-like dreams, memory intrusions that repeat the political violence of the past.

Searching for a new evidence base about repetitions. An exploratory survey of patients’ experiences of traumatic dreams before, during and after therapy

AbstractObjectives:Counselling trauma survivors typically involves addressing repetitive dreams of what happened. No consensus exists about effective responses to these evoked reactions. In part, this is attributable to a scarcity of studies on trauma survivors’ own dream experiences, types of dream work that promote change and patients’ perspectives on outcomes.Method:This was a retrospective, qualitative exploratory study of survivor's experiences of dreaming and dream work.Results:Before starting therapy dreams of trauma exacerbated adjustment difficulties by reinforcing debilitating fears. Therapeutic change occurred in association with developing dream narratives that were not emotionally overwhelming, collaborating with therapists in interpretation of dream material, jointly making links between repeating dream images and features of patients’ current day to day life that furnish reminders of the trauma. Dreams persisted at end of therapy but with reduced frequency having largely lost their capacity to evoke fear.Conclusion:The centrality of memory is emphasised in a new conceptualisation of persistent repetition phenomena that progresses our understanding of growth following adversity.

The Trans/Historicity of Trauma in Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash and Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer

We're carrying a pain that is 400 years old. Alanis Obomsawin The ongoing domestic colonization of North America has a specifically impact on the Native peoples of this land, but what is the or referent to which such an effect can be traced? Is it possible to locate the event of a (post)colonial history that is, as Alanis Obomsawin makes clear in the epigraph, centuries old and, I would add, nations wide? Or, as this paper will argue, does the trans/historicity of Native trauma challenge the very assumption of trauma as rooted in event, where is defined, as it most commonly is, as a singular, recognizable, and chronologically-bounded incident? These questions draw attention to the commonplace understanding of events as singular, recognizable incidents, inviting our consideration of the problematics engendered by recent attempts to theorize the intergenerational colonial subjection of Native North American peoples through the lens of trauma theory-especially that which focuses on individual psychic trauma. Cumulative, collective, intergenerational, and intersubjective, the trauma of Native peoples, when understood as trans/historical, exceeds any attempt to fix its location or define its event, even as it demands our attention to historically specific atrocities. In order to explore the trans/historicity of trauma and, in particular, its unique articulation in Native North American literature, this paper situates two representative novels from the Native literary canon, Jeannette Armstrong's Slash (1985) and Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer (1996), within the nascent conversation between trauma theory and Native experience. By using the word to describe the trauma crafted in Slash and Indian Killer, I run the risk of reinstating, through my own diction, the idea of trauma as transcendent of historical conditions and material realities; indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary defines transhistorical as (Having significance) that transcends the historical; universal or eternal. As a descriptor of the intergenerational trauma of Native communities, the word thus fails to do justice to the complexity of this trauma. Still, I will maintain and nuance it here because of the way in which it gestures toward a trauma that takes place and is repeated in multiple epochs and, in this sense, exceeds its historicity, conventionally understood as its singular location in the past. Also, in its very failure to approach this excess as something other than transcendent or outside of the historical, the word reminds us that the English language circumscribes the way in which we might think about and refer to a event-which-is-not-one. As literary texts, Slash and Indian Killer both express and craft a distinct understanding of traumatic temporality, a term coined by Cathy Caruth (Interview 78). Rooted in a psychoanalytic and poststructuralist methodology, this term refers to the way in which events, because they cannot be known or integrated by the survivor as they occur, are indirectly accessible only as symptom-that is, in their belated return to the survivor as repetitive dreams, flashbacks, and reenactments of the event. Caruth's notion of temporality famously challenges the assumption that the history of trauma involves a one-to-one correspondence of reference and event and ushers in a performative theory of trauma, which understands trauma as dis-located in its reiterative return rather than in its origin-an origin that therefore remains elusive at best. The trans/historicity of Native trauma, as constituted in the work of Armstrong and Alexie, nuances this theory, prompting an exploration of the temporal and spatial dis/location of a trauma that is centuries old and nations wide. A note of clarification is necessary before I proceed: this paper analyzes the specifically literary cultivation of trauma as trans/historical and thus contributes to Jeffrey C. …

Dream features in psychiatric patients on multiple psychoactive drugs.

An investigation into dreams was conducted in 100 subjects involving 50 psychiatric in-patients and fifty normal volunteers with the help of a questionnaire. The dream patterns of the two groups were compared. Results revealed that dreams of the patients were different from normal individuals even before the onset of psychiatric illness. The dreams in normal subjects were mostly related to present life situations whereas, the dreams of the patients were less frequent in this respect. On the other hand, frightening dreams, repetitive dreams and vision of snakes in the dreams were more frequent in patients. These differences became more conspicuous with the onset of illness. The dreams were suppressed in 78% patients after the institution of drug therapy. Most of the patients were getting three to four psychoactive drugs which alter the sleep pattern and may therefore affect the dreaming process. Thus, the qualitative changes in dreams of a person may serve as an early warning for an impending future illness. The suppressant effect of psychoactive drugs on dreams demands further investigations.

Sleep disturbance as the hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder.

The reexperiencing of a traumatic event in the form of repetitive dreams, memories, or flashbacks is one of the cardinal manifestations of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The dream disturbance associated with PTSD may be relatively specific for this disorder, and dysfunctional REM sleep mechanisms may be involved in the pathogenesis of the posttraumatic anxiety dream. Furthermore, the results of neurophysiological studies in animals suggest that CNS processes generating REM sleep may participate in the control of the classical startle response, which may be akin to the startle behavior commonly described in PTSD patients. Speculating that PTSD may be fundamentally a disorder of REM sleep mechanisms, the authors suggest several strategies for future research.

Reconstruction of an Early Seduction and Its Aftereffects

This clinical presentation deals with the aftereffects, in a male patient, of a severely disturbed rapprochement phase, marked by many separations and a molestation before the age of three. The patient dreamed repeatedly of violence, often directed against himself, but the actual molestation was sealed off by formidable repression. A first analysis, with a male analyst, produced no relief from the patient's depression, crippling insomnia, and inability to form an intimate relationship. The second analysis progressed only when the repetitive dreams were understood to be repressed experiences of seduction and molestation.

Implications of Certain Dreams Reported by Patients in a Bulimic Phase of Anorexia Nervosa

An attempt is made to demonstrate the interrelationship between the phenomena which occur in repetitive dreams and the processes which are involved in the creation of symptoms in several patients with the anorexia nervosa syndrome who were studied during a prolonged bulimic phase. The outstanding feature of the repetitive dreams was the undisguised and unrestricted instinctual expression which they contained. The dreams were divided into three main categories: dreams of violence in which the dreamer is depicted as the aggressor; dreams of violence in which the dreamer is described as victim; and finally, sexual dreams which are frankly incestuous. The failure of the dreaming ego to repress the powerful aggressive and sexual drives is accompanied by a concomitant failure of the waking ego in various manifestations of defensive processes. This failure operates within the intrapsychic realm and is accompanied by the utilization of a supplementary process such as bulimia involving the mobilization of resources from the outside world.

The nature and function of repetitive dreams: a survey and speculation.

(1979). The Nature and Function of Repetitive Dreams: A Survey and Speculation. Psychiatry: Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 131-137.

Contents of day and night dreams of emotionally disturbed adolescents.

Content analysis of “night,” “day,” and “repetitive” day dreams of three groups of adolescents has been attempted for the purpose of (a) empirical data collection, (b) classification, (c) achievement of quantitative measures useful for dream studies, and (d) correlation studies. There seem to be significant differences between the contents of day and night dreams in the patient and control population groups, although various degrees of positive correlation of the contents of daily preoccupations, emotions, and happenings with night dream contents in each subject and/or group of subjects do exist. The schizophrenic patients show striking differences in their dream reporting and contents compared to other clinical groups. Positive correlation between the themes of “repetitive day dreams” and “night dreams” in each subject is much greater in the inpatient group than in the other two groups.