Themes,events, and episodes in autobiographical memory

The process by which experience is divided into events was examined. Experiment 1 involved diarists recording their experiences over a 3-month period. Diary entries were later transcribed onto cards and the diarists arranged their cards so as to define events they had experienced, and in a separate phase arranged their cards so as to describe the themes that reflected their life. Examination of event- and theme-building strategies indicated that boundaries were frequently used, and events and themes were often formed from clusters of experience combined using content association rather than temporal sequence. Experiment 2 involved photographs taken by the participants, employed the same procedures as in Experiment 1, and revealed event- and theme-building strategies similar to those identified in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3 the size of the stimulus set from which events and themes were constructed was manipulated; this did not influence construction strategies. Overall, the experiments show that both autobiographical events and themes frequently consist of episodes taken from more than 1 day.     

Memories of uncertain origin: Dreamt or real?

The existence of a memory whose origin, real or dreamt, was uncertain was reported by just over half of an undergraduate sample of 358. Each respondent described one such memory if they had one. The memories were typically of mundane events, although 10 respondents described possible crimes. Respondents were often concerned to resolve the origin of these memories. Their plausibility, vividness, and how well the events fitted into one's life were often considered by the respondents, but where resolution occurred it was frequently based on evidence obtained from the physical or social environment. The reported qualities of the event did not correlate with whether the respondent thought it more likely to have been originally a dream or a real event.     

Memories of uncertain origin: dreamt or real?

The existence of a memory whose origin, real or dreamt, was uncertain was reported by just over half of an undergraduate sample of 358. Each respondent described one such memory if they had one. The memories were typically of mundane events, although 10 respondents described possible crimes. Respondents were often concerned to resolve the origin of these memories. Their plausibility, vividness, and how well the events fitted into one's life were often considered by the respondents, but where resolution occurred it was frequently based on evidence obtained from the physical or social environment. The reported qualities of the event did not correlate with whether the respondent thought it more likely to have been originally a dream or a real event.     

This art of psychoanalysis

It is the art of psychoanalysis in the making, a process inventing itself as it goes, that is the subject of this paper. The author articulates succinctly how he conceives of psychoanalysis, and offers a detailed clinical illustration. He suggests that each analysand unconsciously (and ambivalently) is seeking help in dreaming his 'night terrors' (his undreamt and undreamable dreams) and his 'nightmares' (his dreams that are interrupted when the pain of the emotional experience being dreamt exceeds his capacity for dreaming). Undreamable dreams are understood as manifestations of psychotic and psychically foreclosed aspects of the personality; interrupted dreams are viewed as reflections of neurotic and other non-psychotic parts of the personality. The analyst's task is to generate conditions that may allow the analysand-with the analyst's participation-to dream the patient's previously undreamable and interrupted dreams. A significant part of the analyst's participation in the patient's dreaming takes the form of the analyst's reverie experience. In the course of this conjoint work of dreaming in the analytic setting, the analyst may get to know the analysand sufficiently well for the analyst to be able to say something that is true to what is occurring at an unconscious level in the analytic relationship. The analyst's use of language contributes significantly to the possibility that the patient will be able to make use of what the analyst has said for purposes of dreaming his own experience, thereby dreaming himself more fully into existence.     

社会服务实践对中学生公民行动意向的影响——社会服务观念的中介作用

本研究对6203名参与过不同形式的社会服务实践的中学生进行调查,考察了中学生参与社会服务实践的现状及其对公民行动意向的影响机制。结果发现:(1)我国中学社会服务实践的质量各维度差异较大,内外调控、深化与拓展、课程关联和自主性得分依次显著降低。(2)中学生参与的社会服务实践在城乡、学校类型、年级上存在显著差异,学校类型和年级的交互作用显著。城市、示范学校、低年级的学生参与的社会服务实践的质量较好,示范学校的优势主要体现在低年级阶段。(3)中学生的社会服务实践经历影响其公民行动意向,而社会服务观念在其中起到部分中介作用。高质量的社会服务实践经历有助于改进中学生的社会服务观念,进而增强其公民行动意向。     

From Freud’s dream-work to Bion’s work of dreaming: The changing conception of dreaming in psychoanalytic theory

Bion moved psychoanalytic theory from Freud's theory of dream-work to a concept of dreaming in which dreaming is the central aspect of all emotional functioning. In this paper, I first review historical, theoretical, and clinical aspects of dreaming as seen by Freud and Bion. I then propose two interconnected ideas that I believe reflect Bion’s split from Freud regarding the understanding of dreaming. Bion believed that all dreams are psychological works in progress and at one point suggested that all dreams contain elements that are akin to visual hallucinations. I explore and elaborate Bion’s ideas that all dreams contain aspects of emotional experience that are too disturbing to be dreamt, and that, in analysis, the patient brings a dream with the hope of receiving the analyst’s help in completing the unconscious work that was entirely or partially too disturbing for the patient to dream on his own. Freud views dreams as mental phenomena with which to understand how the mind functions, but believes that dreams are solely the ‘guardians of sleep,’ and not, in themselves, vehicles for unconscious psychological work and growth until they are interpreted by the analyst. Bion extends Freud's ideas, but also departs from Freud and re-conceives of dreaming as synonymous with unconscious emotional thinking – a process that continues both while we are awake and while we are asleep. From another somewhat puzzling perspective, he views dreams solely as manifestations of what the dreamer is unable to think.     

Music in dreams

Music in dreams is rarely reported in scientific literature, while the presence of musical themes in dreams of famous musicians is anecdotally reported. We did a systematic investigation to evaluate whether the occurrence of musical dreams could be related to musical competence and practice, and to explore specific features of dreamt pieces. Thirty-five professional musicians and thirty non-musicians filled out a questionnaire about the characteristics of their musical activity and a structured dream log on the awakening for 30 consecutive days. Musicians dream of music more than twice with respect to non-musicians; musical dreams frequency is related to the age of commencement of musical instruction, but not to the daily load of musical activity. Nearly half of the recalled music was non-standard, suggesting that original music can be created in dreams.     

Linking psychological need experiences to daily and recurring dreams

The satisfaction of individuals’ psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, as conceived from a self-determination theory perspective, is said to be conducive to personal growth and well-being. What has been unexamined is whether psychological need-based experiences, either their satisfaction or frustration, manifests in people’s self-reported dream themes as well as their emotional interpretation of their dreams. A cross-sectional study (N?=?200; M age?=?21.09) focusing on individuals’ recurrent dreams and a three-day diary study (N?=?110; M age?=?25.09) focusing on daily dreams indicated that individuals experiencing psychological need frustration, either more enduringly or on a day-to-day basis, reported more negative dream themes and interpreted their dreams more negatively. The contribution of psychological need satisfaction was more modest, although it related to more positive interpretation of dreams. The discussion focuses on the role of dreams in the processing and integration of psychological need-frustrating experiences.     

Reflections on a wounded and bleeding temenos

COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and financial and political turmoil have uprooted our sense of personal and collective safety and predictability. Analysts are faced with professional and personal challenges, as well as a charge to help make sense of this new normal. This reflective piece focuses on the author’s thoughts on a wounded and bleeding temenos. She grapples with the new reality of analysis carried out via technology (e.g. Zoom or telehealth). The article interweaves personal experiences with theoretical and professional reflections on two Jewish myths that relate to creating temenos or sacred space in the face of ancient disasters. Specifically, she discusses Choni HaMagel, a first-century BCE Jewish scholar and miracle-maker who prays for relief from a drought from inside a sacred circle. She also tells the tale of four Chassidic Rebbes who face crisis from a sacred space in the forest. The author frames this piece with two personal and numinous dreams dreamt during the pandemic; one offering scenes of destruction and one offering hope for a future transformation.     

Music in dreams and the emergence of the self

Abstract :  This paper deals with the presence and possible 'meaning' of music in dreams. The author explores a possible meaning of music as the most fundamental human symbolic experience, which directly points to the emergence of the Self from the primal union mystique with the Great Mother. The relationships between acoustic and visual experiences are taken into account as two basic human forms of coming into existence, although wholly different from each other. The role of music in dreams seems to be that of the most direct representation of the emerging Self in its pure, pre-representational form. Therefore, when music appears in dreams, providing there is the activation of an emotional tone, all other elements—visual and verbal—should be considered as the expression of the sense to which the music is pointing. A clinical example is described in order to better express the author's opinions.     

Dreams as a Meta-Conceptual or Existential Experience

The paper argues that dreams (or the recollected experience of dreams) consist partly in an awareness or experience of the conceptual fabric of our existence. Since what we mean by reality is intimately tied to the concepts given in our experience, dreams are therefore also partly an awareness of the fabric of what we mean by being itself and in general, that is, by objective as well as subjective reality. Further, the paper argues that this characteristic of dreams accounts for several other, more specific aspects of dreams and their possible interpretation, and that it allows us to see how these aspects are related to each other. These more specific aspects are the peculiar types of conceptual or logical relations and transitions that occur within dreams, dreams’ distinctive feeling texture, and some dimensions of the grounds and nature of suitable methods of interpreting dreams.     

Dreams and the holistic nature of interpersonal psychoanalytic experience

Patients’ dreams and analysts’ dreams about patients are assumed to reflect each analytic participant's attitude and psychic conduct toward the other, and an unconscious overlapping of psychic issues and struggles between them as well. This makes it possible to deal with dreams from one‐person and two‐person models of psychological functioning, as well as from an additional psychic dimension that is assumed to be a creation of the analysis itself. As a source of freely moving experience within both participants, one that is assumed to have a life and direction of its own, this latter dimension of analysis permits patient and analyst to undergo more freely the actual experience of the treatment as a modality that is separate from and prior to positivistically grounded determinations that can be made about either the patient or analyst individually, or about the two of them jointly.

This dimension of analysis is said also to reflect a holism that characterizes conscious and unconscious psychoanalytic experience. Dreams and unconsciously generated dreamlike clinical phenomena are presented to try to illustrate this holistic character of analytic work, and to show how either participant's psychic productions maybe used to evoke significant experiences and further clinical knowledge.     

What are sleep-related experiences? Associations with transliminality,psychological distress,and life stress

Sleep-related experiences [Watson, D. (2001). Dissociations of the night: Individual differences in sleep-related experiences and their relation to dissociation and schizotypy. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 526-535] refer to a host of nocturnal altered-consciousness phenomena, including narcoleptic tendencies, nightmares, problem-solving dreams, waking dreams, and lucid dreams. In an attempt to clarify the meaning of this construct, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of sleep-related experiences (SREs), altered-consciousness tendencies (i.e., dissociation and transliminality), psychological distress, childhood maltreatment (i.e., abuse and neglect), and life stress in young adults. Both types of SREs (general SREs and lucid dreaming) were found to be distinguishable from altered-consciousness tendencies. Transliminality emerged as a longitudinal predictor of both general SREs and lucid dreams. Psychological distress and an increase in life stress predicted an increase in general SREs over a 3-month interval. We conclude that transliminality is a general altered-consciousness trait that accounts for some of the individual differences in sleep-related experiences, and that general sleep experiences are an outcome of psychological distress and life stress.     

“To Sleep,Perchance to Dream” … on the Couch: The Interpersonal Nature of Dreams and Other Dissociative Processes—A Case Illustration

I present my experiences with a patient who, for a period of time, frequently slept and dreamt during our sessions. I depict the process of shared exploration undertaken by this patient and myself in our desire to understand, along with her dreams, her sleep and the hypnogogic imagery at its borders. In so doing, I hope to communicate a sense of the clinical richness and manifold meanings of the sleep and dreams as they became apparent to us over time. To this end, rather than following standard format, I have organized the case material into a series of related clinical moments, each followed by a set of theoretical considerations.

A brief survey of the relevant “sleep-on-the-couch” literature, culled from the writings of a variety of prerelational theorists (few more recent theorists have specifically addressed the topic) is presented. I turn also to those whose writings helped illuminate the treatment as it unfolded: Sullivan, Winnicott, Bromberg, Benjamin, and, most particularly, to the writings of Bromberg, Davies and Frawley, and Harris and Gold on the related themes of clinical enactment and dissociative process.     

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.     

Children's conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents

In five investigations we examined 3- and 4-year-olds' conceptions of the relationship between pictures and their referents. In the first two studies, we confirmed that some children judge wrongly that a picture has a feature of the real object it represents, although that feature was added to the real referent after the picture was drawn. Children also judged that a picture that was changed would reacquire its original features, thereby keeping in match with its real referent. In the third, fourth, and fifth studies we included a more difficult no change condition in which the picture slightly mismatched the real referent from the outset. Even children who answered correctly under the previous change conditions wrongly attributed to the picture a visual feature which was present only on the real referent. Such confusions did not occur when children agreed the mismatching picture was not of the real object. We conclude that preschool children have difficulty holding in mind the distinct properties of picture and real referent, just as they tend to confuse the literal and intended meanings of utterances.