I know how you felt last night,or do I? Self- and external ratings of emotions in REM sleep dreams

We investigated whether inconsistencies in previous studies regarding emotional experiences in dreams derive from whether dream emotions are self-rated or externally evaluated. Seventeen subjects were monitored with polysomnography in the sleep laboratory and awakened from every rapid eye movement (REM) sleep stage 5 min after the onset of the stage. Upon awakening, participants gave an oral dream report and rated their dream emotions using the modified Differential Emotions Scale, whereas external judges rated the participants’ emotions expressed in the dream reports, using the same scale. The two approaches produced diverging results. Self-ratings, as compared to external ratings, resulted in greater estimates of (a) emotional dreams; (b) positively valenced dreams; (c) positive and negative emotions per dream; and (d) various discrete emotions represented in dreams. The results suggest that this is mostly due to the underrepresentation of positive emotions in dream reports. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.     

Dream of absent-minded transgression: an empirical study of a cognitive withdrawal symptom.

Among 293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms. In subjects abstinent for 1 year, 63% recalled having dreams about smoking. They had on average 5 of them, and about a quarter occurred after the 6th month of abstinence. Having dreams about smoking was prospectively positively related to maintenance of abstinence. An explanation of this finding based on the association of smoking in dreams with aversive emotions is offered.     

Frequency of Nightmares and Gender Significantly Predict Distressing Dreams of German Athletes Before Competitions or Games

Important sports events are highlights and stressful situations in every athlete's career. This stress might alter the dream content of athletes and consequently evoke disturbed dreaming. In this study, the authors asked 840 German athletes from various sports about distressing dreams on the nights before an important competition or game. About 15% of the athletes stated that they experienced at least 1 distressing dream before an important competition or game during the preceding 12 months. An almost equal number of athletes reported at least 1 distressing dream in their sports career. With respect to the base rate, in about 3% of the events a distressing dream occurred. Reported dream content referred mainly to athletic failure. The main risk factor for an athlete experiencing a distressing dream before a competition appears to be the frequency of experienced nightmares in general. Future research should use diary techniques to study the impact of distressing dreams on the next-day athletic performance in a competition or game.     

Jungian personality typology and the recall of everyday and archetypal dreams

Hypotheses concerning the relations among personality types, neuroticism, and the recall of archetypal dreams were derived from Jungian theory. Dream records were obtained from a nonclinical population in two stages: first, recall of the most recent, most vivid, and earliest remembered dreams (N = 146), and then dream recall on awakening, over an average of 23 nights, from 30 of the first-sample subjects. A total of 697 dreams was recorded. Subjects also completed the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory, and a Dreaming Questionnaire. Dream archetypality was rated in accordance with procedures of H. Y. Kluger. The distribution of archetypal dreams across earliest (n = 106), most vivid (n = 105), and most recent (n = 102) dream types matched Kluger's earlier results. The dream diary recall data showed that Jungian intuitives, as measured via Myers-Briggs continuous scores, recalled more archetypal dreams; introverts, as measured via Myers-Briggs continuous scores, recalled more everyday dreams; high EPI neuroticism scorers recalled fewer archetypal dreams. The results support several propositions of Jungian personality theory.     

Retrospective dream components and musical preferences

Retrospective dream components endorsed on the KJP Dream Inventory were correlated with those on the Short Test of Musical Preference for 68 graduate students in counseling psychology (11 men). Among 40 correlations, 6 were significant between preferences for Heavy Metal and Dissociative avoidance dreams (.32), Dreaming that you are dreaming (.40), Dreaming that you have fallen unconscious or asleep (.41), Recurring pleasantness (.31), and Awakening abruptly from a dream (-.31); between preferences for Rap/Hip-Hop and Sexual dreams (.27); and between preferences for Jazz and Recurring pleasantness in dreams (.33). Subjects preferring Classical music reported a higher incidence of Dreams of flying (.33) and rated higher Discontentedness in dreams (-.26). The meaning of these low values awaits research based on personality inventories and full dream reports.     

Frequency of nightmares and gender significantly predict distressing dreams of German athletes before competitions or games

Important sports events are highlights and stressful situations in every athlete's career. This stress might alter the dream content of athletes and consequently evoke disturbed dreaming. In this study, the authors asked 840 German athletes from various sports about distressing dreams on the nights before an important competition or game. About 15% of the athletes stated that they experienced at least 1 distressing dream before an important competition or game during the preceding 12 months. An almost equal number of athletes reported at least 1 distressing dream in their sports career. With respect to the base rate, in about 3% of the events a distressing dream occurred. Reported dream content referred mainly to athletic failure. The main risk factor for an athlete experiencing a distressing dream before a competition appears to be the frequency of experienced nightmares in general. Future research should use diary techniques to study the impact of distressing dreams on the next-day athletic performance in a competition or game.     

Will students pass a competitive exam that they failed in their dreams?

We tested whether dreams can anticipate a stressful exam and how failure/success in dreams affect next-day performance. We collected information on students’ dreams during the night preceding the medical school entrance exam. Demographic, academic, sleep and dream characteristics were compared to the students’ grades on the exam. Of the 719 respondents to the questionnaire (of 2324 total students), 60.4% dreamt of the exam during the night preceding it. Problems with the exam appeared in 78% of dreams and primarily involved being late and forgetting answers. Reporting a dream about the exam on the pre-exam night was associated with better performance on the exam (p = .01). The frequency of dreams concerning the exam during the first term predicted proportionally higher performance on the exam (R = 0.1, p = .01). These results suggest that the negative anticipation of a stressful event in dreams is common and that this episodic simulation provides a cognitive gain.     

Inducing lucid dreams by olfactory-cued reactivation of reality testing during early-morning sleep: A proof of concept

The reliable induction of lucid dreams is a challenge in lucid dream research. In a previous study by our research group we were able to induce in about 50% of the participants a lucid dream in a single sleep laboratory night by combining a wake-up-back-to-bed sleep protocol and a mnemonic technique. In the present study, we extended our previous procedure by additional presentation of an odor during sleep to reactivate memory traces about reality testing. In total 16 male participants spent a single night in the sleep lab whereas the procedure induced in two participants a lucid dream (12.5%). The induction rate stays below the success rate of our previous study and therefore odor-cueing seems not a promising technique for inducing lucid dreams. Beside the odor presentation, several other methodological changes have been made, which will be discussed and hopefully help further dream engineering to improve induction techniques.     

Dream content: Individual and generic aspects

Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness.     

Self-reported effects of dreams on waking-life creativity: an empirical study

The authors studied the self-rated effect of dreams on creativity in participants who were not selected for creative abilities. Students (N = 444) and online respondents (N = 636) answered a questionnaire about dreams and creative dreams. In addition, the students completed several personality measures and creativity scales. Results indicated that dreams that stimulated waking-life creativity played a considerable role in the lives of ordinary people (about 8% of all dreams). Examples reported by the online participants fell into 4 categories: (a) dream images used for art, work, or similar areas; (b) dreams that solved a problem; (c) dreams that provided the impetus to do something that the dreamer otherwise had difficulty doing; and (d) dreams containing emotional insights. The main factors influencing frequency of creative dreams were dream recall frequency and the thin boundaries personality dimension. Future researchers should use diary techniques to study the effects of dreams on waking life and should develop techniques to increase the frequency of creative dreams that might be valuable as aids for people in creative jobs.     

以身化梦：意象体现的理论、方法与技术探析

“意象体现”是由罗伯特·伯尼克依据分析心理学的理论创立的一种“梦的工作”方法,主张在介于意识与无意识之间的阈限状态中采用积极想象的方式对梦中意象进行再体验,通过对不同身体感受的觉知使无意识内容意识化来达到相应的治疗效果。意象体现理论主张,梦具有真实性,应当以主客体一致性的隐喻视角来看待梦,并且对梦的工作具有治疗的意义;对梦的工作应当遵循非解析工作与体验科学、阈限状态、共验交流、心理自居与发生转换四个关键原则。其具体技术过程包括工作状态的准备、进入阈限状态、对梦进行持续性体验、心理自居与发生转换、感觉融合与离开梦境五步。其方法沿革于催眠术、自由联想与积极想象。作为分析心理学中有关梦的一套前沿的思想理论以及临床心理治疗中一种创新性的梦的工作方式,意象体现具有广阔的学术研究及实际应用前景。     

Frequency of lucid dreaming in a representative German sample

Lucid dreams occur when a person is aware that he is dreaming while he is dreaming. In a representative sample of German adults (N = 919), 51% of the participants reported that they had experienced a lucid dream at least once. Lucid dream recall was significantly higher in women and negatively correlated with age. However, these effects might be explained by the frequency of dream recall, as there was a correlation of .57 between frequency of dream recall and frequency of lucid dreams. Other sociodemographic variables like education, marital status, or monthly income were not related to lucid dream frequency. Given the relatively high prevalence of lucid dreaming reported in the present study, research on lucid dreams might be pursued in the sleep laboratory to expand the knowledge about sleep, dreaming, and consciousness processes in general.     

Daydreams and nap dreams: Content comparisons

Differences between nighttime REM and NREM dreams are well-established but only rarely are daytime REM and NREM nap dreams compared with each other or with daydreams. Fifty-one participants took daytime naps (with REM or NREM awakenings) and provided both waking daydream and nap dream reports. They also provided ratings of their bizarreness, sensory experience, and emotion intensity. Recall rates for REM (96%) and NREM (89%) naps were elevated compared to typical recall rates for nighttime dreams (80% and 43% respectively), suggesting an enhanced circadian influence. All attribute ratings were higher for REM than for NREM dreams, replicating findings for nighttime dreams. Compared with daydreams, NREM dreams had lower ratings for emotional intensity and sensory experience while REM dreams had higher ratings for bizarreness and sensory experience. Results support using daytime naps in dream research and suggest that there occurs selective enhancement and inhibition of specific dream attributes by REM, NREM and waking state mechanisms.     

Dreaming under fire: the psyche in times of continuous stress

Continuous stress and trauma are manifested in dreams, the study of which can expand our knowledge concerning unconscious reactions to trauma and efforts of coping with continuous traumatic situations. In our research we asked people living under continuous threat of rocket attacks to record their dreams and their associations to them during four consecutive weeks. We collected 609 dreams from 44 women and 18 men (age range 14-62). The dreams submitted were analysed according to the Jungian approach in the light of the information and associations presented by the subjects. Full dream series of dreamers from each group were analysed in an attempt to capture the depth-psychological experience of living and dreaming under fire. The most frequent themes found were: ‘concrete vs. symbolic', ‘togetherness', ‘active ego', ‘fear and anxiety', ‘shadow' and ‘personal issue'. The subjects were divided into three age groups. Differences between the occurrences of themes were examined. On the unconscious level our results showed that the adolescents group seemed to be the most vulnerable to the stress situation (preponderance of concrete dreams), the mature adults group was the least influenced by it (preponderance of symbolic dreams and of the ‘personal issue' theme) and the young adults group made the greatest psychological efforts for coping (preponderance of ‘active ego' theme). We noted few anima figures appearing in the men's dreams, while animus figures appeared in the women's dreams. In another study undertaken immediately after one of the recent wars in Gaza we collected dreams of Israelis living in the south of Israel who were under heavy daily rocket attacks, and dreams of Palestinians living in the West Bank. The most significant difference we found between the groups was a preponderance of symbolic dreams among the Palestinians, as opposed to a preponderance of concrete trauma dreams among the Israeli group living on the Gaza border. In both groups we found archetypal symbols of evil. In conclusion, dreams can help us detect emotional distress, even when subjects seem ‘ok'. Early detection and working with dreams can help prevent the severity of delayed PTSD.     

Jungian theory of dreaming and contemporary dream research – findings from the research project ‘Structural Dream Analysis’

The research method ‘Structural Dream Analysis’ (SDA) is described which allows for systematic and objective analysis of the meaning of dreams produced by patients in Jungian psychotherapies. The method focuses especially on the relationship between the dream ego and other figures in the dream and the extent of activity of the dream ego. Five major dream patterns were identified which accounted for the majority of the dreams. The clients’ dream series were dominated by one or two repetitive patterns which were closely connected to the psychological problems of the dreamers. Additionally, typical changes in the dream series’ patterns could be identified which corresponded with therapeutic change. These findings support Jung's theory of dreams as providing a holistic image of the dreamer’s psyche, including unconscious aspects. The implications for different psychoanalytic theories of dreaming and dream interpretation are discussed as well as implications for the continuity hypothesis.     

Threat in dreams: an adaptation?

Revonsuo's influential Threat Simulation Theory (TST) predicts that people exposed to survival threats will have more threat dreams, and evince enhanced responses to dream threats, compared to those living in relatively safe conditions. Participants in a high crime area (South Africa: n=208) differed significantly from participants in a low crime area (Wales, UK: n=116) in having greater recent exposure to a life-threatening event (chi([1,N=186])(2)=14.84, p<.00012). Contrary to TST's predictions, the SA participants reported significantly fewer threat dreams (chi([1,N=287])(2)=6.11, p<.0134), and did not differ from the Welsh participants in responses to dream threats (Fisher's Exact test, p=.2478). Overall, the incidence of threat in dreams was extremely low-less than 20% of dreams featured realistic survival threats. Escape from dream threats occurred in less than 2% of dreams. We conclude that this evidence contradicts key aspects of TST.     

Flying dreams stimulated by an immersive virtual reality task

Despite a high prevalence and broad interest in flying dreams, these exceptional experiences remain infrequent. Our study aimed to (1) induce flying dreams using a custom-built virtual reality (VR) flying task, (2) examine their phenomenological correlates and (3) investigate their relations to participant state and trait factors. 137 participants underwent VR-flying followed by a morning nap. They also completed home dream journals for 5 days before and 10 days after the VR exposure. VR-flying successfully increased the reporting of flying dreams during the laboratory nap and on the following morning compared to both baseline frequencies and a control cohort. Flying dreams were also changed qualitatively, exhibiting higher levels of Lucid-control and emotional intensity, after VR exposure. Factors such as prior dream-flying experiences and level of VR sensory immersion modulated flying dream induction. Findings are consistent with a new vection-based explanation of dream-flying and may facilitate development of dream flight-induction technologies.     

The incidence of out-of-body experiences in hospitalized patients

The author studied out-of-body experiences (OBEs), cultural differences in reporting those OBEs, and associations between OBEs and frequency of dream recall in 100 white and 100 black adults hospitalized in a university medical center. Of the 200 subjects interviewed, 31 reported having had an OBE, six during the current hospitalization. White patients reported OBEs significantly more often than did black patients, possibly because of methodological problems in the interview techniques. Chi-squared tests showed significant positive associations between frequency of dream recall and incidence of OBEs, and between vivid dreams and incidence of OBEs.     

A template model of embodiment while dreaming: Proposal of a mini-me

Dreams are usually centered around a dream self capable of tasks generally impossible in waking, e.g. flying or walking through walls. Moreover, the bodily dream self appears relatively stable and insensitive to changes of the embodied wake self, raising the question of whether and to what extent the dream self is embodied. To further explore its determinants, we tested whether the dream self would be affected by either pre-sleep focused attention to a body part or by its experimental alteration during the day. Choosing a repeated-measures design, we analyzed how often key words reflecting the experimental manipulations appeared in the dream reports. Results suggest that the dream self is not affected by these manipulations, strengthening the hypothesis that, in the majority of dreams, the dream self is only weakly embodied, utilizing a standard template of embodiment akin to a prototype of self operating independently from the physical waking self.     

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

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