The influence of impactful dreams on self-perceptual depth and spiritual transformation.

Two studies contrasted the short-term effects of nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams (Busink & Kuiken, 1996; Kuiken & Sikora, 1993). Results from Study 1 indicated that existential dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, transcendent dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported self-perceptual depth; also, transcendent dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, existential dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported spiritual transformation. Results from Study 2 replicated these findings for existential dreams, indicating also that the type of spiritual transformation associated with transcendent dreams involved an ecstatic sense of release from everyday entanglements. Both existential dreams and transcendent dreams moved the dreamer toward an unbounded sense of life in all things, as did lucid forms of all three dream types. Such unbounded enlivenment suggests an aesthetic substrate to the changes induced by each of these dream types. The contrasting short-term effects of impactful dream types may require integration into a comprehensive model of long-term dream function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The central image makes "big" dreams big: The central image as the emotional heart of the dream.

"Big dreams" are hard to define. This paper considers "big" dreams under several more easily definable subcategories: memorable dreams; important dreams (labeled by dreamer); significant dreams; and impactful dreams. Past studies are reviewed, and five new preliminary studies are presented showing that a powerful Central Image (CI) distinguishes "big" dreams in all subcategories. 1) Dreams labeled "important" by the dreamer have higher CI intensity than dreams labeled "unimportant." 2) Dreams labeled "especially significant" have especially high CI intensity. 3) Impactful dreams (leading to a new discovery) have a very high CI intensity. 4) The dreams of people who score very "thin" on the Boundary Questionnaire (BQ)--sometimes called "dream-people"--have higher CI intensity than the dreams of people who score "thick." 5) In a separate, larger group, there is a significant positive correlation between CI intensity and "thinness." It appears that CI intensity is an important measure of the "bigness" of dreams. The present results are consistent with the Contemporary Theory of Dreaming which states that dreams involve making connections guided by emotion, that the Ci of the dream pictures the emotion, and that CI intensity measures the power of the underlying emotion. "Big" dreams are dreams with great emotional power and have powerful Central Images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Content analysis of dreams and waking narratives.

This study investigated the specificity of dream content and its continuity with waking life. For each subject (125 men and 125 women, between the ages of 19 and 29 years), a dream and a waking episode were collected according to “the most recent dream” method (Hartmann, Elkin, & Garg, 1991), which was also applied to “a recent life episode.” Both kinds of narratives were analyzed through the application of the Hall–Van de Castle System (1966) and a typical content analysis (a compendium of the most important typical dream taxonomies). In dreams, typical situations involved the dreamer trying to perform some physical action, most frequently with difficulties in mastering the task. Affective relationships and hostile interactions with an enemy were shared by both narratives, but cognitive activities were uncommon in both cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Detecting meaning in dream reports: An extension of a word search approach.

Building on previous investigations of waking–dreaming continuities using word search technology (Bulkeley 2009a, 2009b; Domhoff & Schneider, 2008), we demonstrate that a blind analysis of a dream series using only word search methods can accurately predict many important aspects of the individual's waking life, including personality attributes, relationships, activities, and cultural preferences. Results from a study of the “Van” dream series (N = 192) show that blind inferences drawn from a word search analysis were almost entirely accurate according to the dreamer. After presenting these findings we discuss several remaining shortcomings and suggest ways of improving the method for use by other researchers involved in the search for a more systematic understanding of meaning in dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incidence of Threat in Dreams: A Response to Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory.

A. Revonsuo (2000b) proposed an evolutionary theory of dreaming, stating it is a threat simulation mechanism that allowed early humans to rehearse threat perception and avoidance without biological cost. The present study aimed to establish the proportion of dreams containing physical threats to the dreamer, whether these represent realistic life-threatening events, and whether the dreamer successfully and realistically escapes. It also examined incidence of threatening events in real life. A sample of most recent dreams was collected (N = 401). Only 8.48% of dreamers reported realistic life-threatening events in dreams and a realistic escape subsequently occurred in only one third of these reports. Actual severe life-threatening events were experienced by 44.58% of the sample. These findings contradict key aspects of Revonsuo's theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Significant Dream as Emblem of Uniqueness: The Fertilizer Does Not Explain the Flower

Recent, renewed attention to big or significant dreams calls into question many widely held assumptions about dreams. This essay focuses on the assumption that dreams can be accounted for in terms of the dominant emotions and concerns of the dreamer at the time of the dream. That assumption is found to be inadequate to account for at least some significant dream experiences. Archetypal psychology's aesthetic, phenomenological approach to dreams is presented as providing an instructive, illuminating alternative for understanding the on-going significance of significant dreams.     

Dream content: Reflections of the emotional and psychological states of earthquake survivors.

This study investigated dream narratives as reflections of the emotional and psychological states of earthquake survivors. Dreams and dreams imagery have reportedly been affected by the emotional and psychological trauma that the dreamer goes through. Dream narratives and dream content ratings used in earlier studies were utilized in this study. Narratives and content ratings were obtained from a sample of 27 volunteer survivors of the October 8, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan (Azad Kashmir area) and 27 volunteer controls from similar demographics. Three independent raters judged the dream narratives and dream content ratings. The judges rating were highly congruent (86.05). Findings revealed that the survivor group had more vivid, unpleasant, horrifying, and hostile dreams compared with the control group. However, there were no significant gender differences. The data suggest that a closer study of dreams can be used to understand the underlying trauma for effective interventions. In addition, interesting emergence of recurrent dreams was seen, which will be independently studied in future. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dream content and memory processing: Dream lag effects within a single night and across several nights: A pilot study.

Dream content may reflect elements of memory processing occurring within a single night and across several days or weeks. One 19-year-old healthy female college student kept a daily diary, a sleep diary, and recorded her dreams for 2 months. A preset alarm clock allowed her to sample dreams from both early NREM-rich and late REM-rich sleep. Dreams were examined for memory elements that were similar to diary entries. There were 55 scorable dreams obtained during 25 nights. Matches between dream elements and daytime events occurred quite frequently depending on dream element. Dream characters, actions, themes, and settings more often matched daytime memories than dream objects, emotions, or events. Matches were also time dependent. Emotions appeared in dreams after the subject experienced them sooner than all other elements (1.5 days), while objects took the longest to appear in dreams (3.5 days). With respect to within night cognitive processing, 42% of scorable nights contained the same memory elements in the first and last dreams and 8% of scorable nights contained the same emotion within the same context between an early and late dream. Selected dream elements appear to reflect memory processing occurring throughout the night and over the course of several days. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comment on Baylor: A Note About Dreams of Scientific Problem Solving

Creative problem-solving dreams virtually always occur only after the dreamer has done extensive work on the issue awake. Most typically, a person is stuck at one particular step of a multiple phase process and the dream solves that step. The dream of Dmitri Mendeleev about The Periodic Table of the Elements is no exception. All accounts of this event agree that he'd worked for years on the Table, produced other drafts, but that he attributed the version he was most satisfied with to a dream. It is less clear whether Kedrov is correct in his reconstruction that it was the reversal of columns vs. rows which the dream provided. Accounts of dreams from contemporary scientists and inventors are a richer source for the detail required to generalize about the role of dreams in problem solving.     

Dream and blog content analysis of a long term diary of a video game player with obsessive compulsive disorder.

A case study of a young man who is an avid video game player and designer is the focus of this paper. His online Website offers over 800 dreams, of which over half were content analyzed using the Hall and Van de Castle system. Also available were daily blogs. Thus, several research questions could be addressed. Did the diary evidence consistency across time? Did the dreams evidence incorporation of activities discussed in the daily blogs from the day before the dream? Did this one individual's dream diary echo former research into the dreams of video game players? A final question was addressed because of the diagnosis of the diarist as having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Did the dreams of this young man echo previous research into dreams of OCD sufferers? The findings were that the diary was consistent across time and there was incorporation of some elements of the daily blog into subsequent dreams. Some aspects of his dreams echoed previous video game players' dream findings, like more dead and imaginary characters. Finally, the OCD analysis only partly replicated the previous research into the dreams of those with OCD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Revision of the good fortune scale: A new tool for the study of "big dreams."

This article proposes a revision of the good fortune (GF) scale of the Hall and Van de Castle (HVDC; 1966) content analysis scoring system. In place of the original one-point GF scale, this proposed revision offers a 6-point scale that conceptually matches the HVDC system's 6 types of misfortune. The GF scale is then applied to the 1000 HVDC norm dreams to generate a new estimation of the average frequency of the 6 types of good fortune. These findings are discussed in relation to the study of highly memorable and impactful dreams, what C. G. Jung (1948/1979) called "big dreams." The new GF scale strengthens the ability of the HVDC system to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of those rare but unusually significant types of dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Big dreams: An analysis using central image intensity, content analysis, and word searches.

The authors provide empirical data to help answer the question of what distinguishes “big dreams” (Jung, 1974) from ordinary dreams. Reported here are the results of a multifaceted quantitative analysis of 162 most recent dreams and 162 most memorable dreams gathered from the same group of individuals. This matched collection of recent and memorable dream reports was analyzed by a novel combination of three quantitative methods: Hartmann's (1998, 2008) research on central images, Hall and Van de Castle's (1966) content analysis, and Bulkeley's (2009b) word search approach. Using these different methods of analysis on the same two sets of dreams provided an unusually detailed portrait of the basic patterns of big dreams. The results suggest that big dreams are distinguished by a tendency toward “primal” qualities of form and content: more intense imagery, more nature references, more physical aggression, more family characters, more fantastic/imaginary beings, and more magical happenings, along with less high-order cognition and less connection to ordinary daily surroundings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

REM dreaming in the transition from late childhood to adolescence: A longitudinal study.

In this longitudinal developmental study, 12 boys and 12 girls provided REM dreams at 3 age levels: 9-11, 11-13, and 13-15 years. A total of 551 dreams were coded by 2 independent raters using C. Hall and R. Van de Castle's (1966) content categories. In addition, ratings of dream realism, the dreamer's self-involvement, and the frequency of speech acts were carried out. There was little change in the basic content categories of REM dreams. However, the frequency of unrealistic dream elements declined, whereas the ability to inventively put together separate contents of the memory system to produce meaningful scenes increased. Self-representation changed from passive experience to interactive involvement, along with an increasing number of speech acts by the dreamer. The similarity of the findings with Hall and Van de Castle categories to findings with home dreams from the same 24 participants is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mystical dreaming: Patterns in form, content, and meaning.

This article enriches the psychological understanding of religious mysticism by exploring patterns of form, content, and meaning in self-described mystical dreams, drawing on extensive sleep and dream interviews conducted with 100 contemporary Americans. Four major hypotheses regarding mystical experience are tested: mysticism as psychopathological, as culturally constructed, as a mode of pure consciousness, and as characterized by four Jamesian “marks” (ineffability, noesis, transience, passivity). The data from this study indicate that mystical dreams are experienced by around half the population and by women more than men, and their prototypical form involves good fortunes, friendly interactions, and unusual or nonhuman characters. These findings provide only limited validation for the psychopathology and pure consciousness hypotheses and somewhat more support for the Jamesian and cultural construction approaches. Taken together, the results suggest that psychological efforts to understand religious mysticism will remain incomplete without systematic reference to contemporary dream research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Earliest Remembered Dreams.

Eighty-five earliest remembered dreams (ERDs) were gathered in personal interviews with adults living in a rural area of northeast America. The dreams were analyzed for content patterns and narrative themes, and the results were compared with the theories of S. Freud (1900/1965), C. G. Jung (1974), D. Foulkes (1999), G. W. Domhoff (1996), and A. Revonsuo (2000). ERDs tended to be nightmares, with a mix of realistic and fantasy elements. The findings largely agreed with Foulkes's and Domhoff's studies of children's dreams. Revonsuo's threat simulation theory received strong support, as did Jung's notion of early childhood as a time of "big dreaming." Freud's wish-fulfillment theory received less support, though some ERDs did include a manifestly wish-fulfilling dimension. Implications for therapy, education, parenting, and theories of human consciousness are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Relationship of Dream Content and Changes in Daytime Mood in Traumatized vs. Non-Traumatized Children

The study examined how the mood changes from night to morning, and how dysphoric dream contents associate with this change among children who live in traumatic environment and their controls from peaceful area. The sample consisted of 413 Palestinian boys and girls of 6–15 years of age, the mean age being 11.22 ± 2.64. The participants filled in a seven-day dream diary in which they recorded their recalled dreams every morning. First, the results, confirmed that mood change from evening to morning is a general dream function: age and gender are not related to the change. The mood chance was rather associated with what and whom the children dreamt about. Second, the hypothesis of the trauma group showing less change in dysphoric dream content and in the intensity of negative morning mood across a period of time of seven days was not confirmed. On the contrary, the results showed that both dreams incorporating dysphoric themes and negative morning mood decreased only among children living in traumatic conditions. Third, it was hypothesized that there is a stronger association between presleep negative mood and dysphoric dreams, as well as between the dysphoric dreams and negative morning mood among children living in traumatic environment than among children from peaceful area. Contrary to the hypothesis, results for the trauma group revealed a reverse association between evening mood and dream contents: the more afraid, angry and worried children felt in the evening, the more Happy recreation dreams they reported, and the happier evening mood they reported, the more Threatening stranger dreams they had. However, concurring with the hypothesis, a direct association was found between dysphoric dreams and negative morning mood in the trauma group. The more children dreamt about Threatening strangers, the more afraid, angry and worried they felt in the morning. The discussion proposes a model of the correcting or balancing dream function that is characterized by an reverse assimilation of incorporating evening mood into dreams, and by a direct accommodation of dream content into morning mood.     

Medication and Dreams: Changes in Dream Content After Drug Treatment

This case study examines the effects of sertraline (Zoloft ^TM ) on the dream content of a young woman with generalized anxiety disorder and panic attacks. The study used the major categories of Hall and Van de Castle's (1966) system of content analysis to compare dream reports before and after drug treatment. Prior to diagnosis and treatment, the dreamer had high levels of aggression and low levels of friendliness in her dreams. The post-medication dreams more closely approximate the female norms. This pilot study suggests a new direction for research on the effects of medication on dream content.     

Electronic media and lucid-control dreams: Morning after reports.

Lucid dreams, as well as control dreams, have recently been reported as associated with video game play (Gackenbach, 2006). In this study, dreams were collected from the morning after a night of rested sleep as well as electronic media use from the day before the dream. In a factor analysis, lucid and control dreams were associated with all electronic media use but most strongly with video game play. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recurrent dreams and psychosocial adjustment in preteenaged children.

Research indicates that recurrent dreams in adults are associated with impoverished psychological well-being. Whether similar associations exist in children remains unknown. The authors hypothesized that children reporting recurrent dreams would show poorer psychosocial adjustment than children without recurrent dreams. One hundred sixty-eight 11-year-old children self-reported on their recurrent dreams and on measures of psychosocial adjustment. Although 35% of children reported having experienced a recurrent dream during the past year, our hypothesis was only partially supported. Multivariate analyses revealed a marginally significant interaction between gender and recurrent dream presence and a significant main effect of gender. Univariate analyses revealed that boys reporting recurrent dreams reported significantly higher scores on reactive aggression than those who did not (d = 0.58). This suggests that by age 11 years, the presence of recurrent dreams may already reflect underlying emotional difficulties in boys but not necessarily in girls. Challenges in addressing this developmental question are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)