The On-Going Significance of Significant Dreams: The Case of the Bodiless Head

In the growing literature on significant dreams, relatively little attention has been given to the enduring, even life-long, influence some dreams have on dreamers' lives. This article describes an ongoing research project on significant dreams by way of an illustrative case of a young woman whose 20-year-old dream still resonates in her psychic life. We suggest that such dreams might be better understood in terms of the aesthetics of & #x201C;image rather than the interpretation of dreams as & #x201C;text.     

The Sanctification of Dreams: Prevalence and Implications

Many scientists and practitioners have debated about the function of dreams. Though some researchers have described dreams as purposeless random neuronal firings, others have suggested that dreams serve an adaptive function with certain dream characteristics having positive implications. Drawing on other studies of sanctification, this study examines whether imbuing a dream with qualities of the sacred relates to beneficial outcomes. Examining a college student sample of 168, it was found that the more sacred the dream was perceived, the more beneficial the outcome reported from a stressful life event which related to the dream. These outcomes include less negative affect and more positive affect, psychological and spiritual growth. Sanctification of dreams predicted these outcome variables over and above other religious measures as well as dream measures. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Dreams in the History of Philosophy

For 2,500 years western philosophers showed great interest in dreams—as subjects, examples, analogies, and contexts. Since 1960 this interest has declined, while scholars in other disciplines continue to study dreams, often addressing philosophical issues. The history and the current dialogue invite philosophers to reinvigorate their study of dreams. This essay develops these observations about the philosophy of dreams by focusing on its history, briefly noting its recent decline, and closing with comments about its future.     

Object Representations in Dreams of Chicanos and Anglos

The relationship between the cultures to which persons belong and their internalized object representations as revealed by manifest dream content was investigated. It was hypothesized that because Chicanos are from a more nurturing culture than Anglos, they would represent persons in their dreams as more differentiated, articulated, and integrated, with more benevolent interactions. 50 Chicano and 50 Anglo university students (25 of each gender in each culture) reported a total of 555 dreams that were scored according to the Concept of the Object Scale (Blatt, Brenneis, Schimek & Glick, 1976). The Scale applies developmental principles concerning the three dimensions of differentiation, articulation, and integration to the study of human responses given to the Rorschach. This research applied the Scale to the manifest content of the subjects' reported dreams. The cross-cultural hypothesis was disconfirmed; however, there were strong findings concerning gender. Gender differences across culture were statistically significant in each developmental dimension, ranging from females representing more humans, who are better articulated and more benevolently interactive (p < .01) to females reporting more intentional, congruent actions and more interactions (p < .05). The only cross-cultural finding was that Anglos represent more action in their dreams than Chicanos (p < .05). Within the sample of acculturated Chicano subjects, genders were polarized to a much greater extent than in the Anglo sample. Implications of the findings for theoretical understanding of gender and cultural differences in object representations are discussed.     

A Note on the Social Referents of Dreams

Social as well as personal referents appear in dreams and, when recognized as such, provide insight into how unresolved social issues seep into the personal domain at an unconscious level. Dream-sharing groups (because of the time available and other factors) offer a particularly favorable opportunity to observe this interplay. The truth-telling nature of dreaming consciousness not only exposes disconnects from our past arising out of our unique personal developmental history, but also calls attention to the way such disconnects are reinforced by current bias and prejudice. The concern of the dream with connectivity leads to the broader issue of the role dreams play in maintaining the unity of the human species and its survival.     

Children's Dreams and Nightmares: Emerging Trends in Research.

New manifest content analysis research on children's dreams and nightmares provides insights into how dreaming reveals developmental changes over time. Five culturally diverse research studies were conducted with varied methods for dream collection that included laboratory-collected dreams, as well as written journals, audiotaped dreams, and retrospectively recalled dreams. As children grow older, they are more able to recall dreams, dream narratives increase in length, and dreams are characterized by decreasing levels of passive victimization and have more elaborate character interactions. Age and gender differences in recall, interactions, and gender of dream characters indicate that dream research is a fertile area for studying child development and the changing function of dreams over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreams and revelations: A critical look at Kelsey.

After a seven-century lull in Christian scholarship about dreams, the mid-Twentieth Century saw the beginning of a growing effort to convince Christians dreams are a significant means of communication with God. This essay summarizes and criticizes Morton Kelsey's central argument concerning the Christian significance of dreams in his God, dreams, and revelation (1991). Kelsey's is a thoughtful version of the argument common to his colleagues. As such, it displays both the strengths and the weaknesses of the general position. It correctly reminds Christians of dreams' significance in their past. But if Kelsey means to offer a fully supported logical argument, that argument is not clear and even the most sympathetic restatement of it leaves it unsound. (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.     

Dreams in medieval Saints' lives: Saint Francis of Assisi.

Reading the earliest biographies of St. Francis of Assisi, one notices the significant part dreams play in his life. They appear during crucial stages of his life. This fact encourages us to pay special interest to Francis' dreams, but not in the strict sense of the word: Several situations in which Francis gains clarity of his life and grows spiritually through images (dreams, visions, parables) are to be included. Francis and his biographers were men of images, and it is necessary to understand the language of these images. In this way, by analyzing the dreams of this saint, the authors come to understand the medieval interpretation of dreams, revelations, and visions in general. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreaming and the Cinema of David Lynch

This essay explores the influence of dreams and dreaming on the filmmaking of DavidLynch. Focusing particular attention on Mulholland Drive (2001), Lost Highway (1997), Blue Velvet (1986), and the television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), the essay will discuss the multiple dream elements in Lynch's work and how they have contributed to the broad cultural influence of his films. Lynch's filmmaking offers an excellent case study of the powerful connection between dreaming and movies in contemporary American society.     

Sleeping Dreams, Waking Hallucinations, and the Central Nervous System

Consciousness is now considered a primary function and activity of the brain itself. If so, consciousness is simply the brain's interpretation and integration of all the information made available to it at any given time. On the assumption that the brain is active across all states of being (wakefulness, REM sleep, and NREM sleep), this article proposes that dreaming and hallucinations represent variations on the same theme. Under usual circumstances during wakefulness, the brain ignores internally generated activity and attends to environmental sensory stimulation. During sleep, dreaming occurs because the brain attends to endogenously generated activity. In unusual settings, such as sleep-deprivation, sensory deprivation, or medication or drug ingestion, the brain attends to exogenous and endogenous activities simultaneously, resulting in hallucinations, or wakeful dreaming. This concept is supported by numerous neurologic conditions and syndromes that are associated with hallucinations.     

Contextualizing Images in Dreams: More Intense After Abuse and Trauma

A contextualizing image (CI) is a powerful central image in a dream which can be seen as picturing, or providing a picture-context for, the dominant emotion of the dreamer. Thus the paradigmatic dream, I was overwhelmed by a tidal wave, contextualizes the dominant emotion of fear/terror or helplessness. This study examined the question of whether CIs, scored on a blind basis, are especially frequent and intense in persons who have suffered abuse, and in persons who have suffered a recent acute trauma.Two sets of dream data were studied. A single most recent dream was obtained from each of 306 students. The contextualizing image (CI) score measuring presence and intensity of a contextualizing image, scored on a blind basis, was higher among students who reported any abuse (physical or sexual, childhood or recent) compared to those who reported no abuse.Second, a total of 451 dreams were collected in periods after trauma from ten persons who had experienced a variety of different acute traumas. In four of the ten cases, a series of dreams before as well as immediately after trauma were available. In all four of these, the CI score was higher after trauma than before, but the difference was statistically significant in only one case. The CI scores in the ten trauma subjects overall were found to be significantly higher than the CI scores in the overall student group. In each of the ten trauma cases, the mean CI score was higher than the mean CI score of the student group. The differences were even greater, with higher t values, when the 10 trauma cases were compared with the group of students who had reported no abuse. Since the student group differed greatly from the trauma group in sex distribution, age, and other ways, an age and gender matched subgroup of the students was formed. CI scores in the trauma group were significantly higher than in this matched control group.The emotions rated as contextualized by the dream images tended towards more negative than positive emotions. Fear/terror and helplessness/vulnerability were especially prominent. However, this was true in the dreams of students who reported no abuse, as well as those of students who reported abuse and the dreams of the group who had experienced trauma. The students who reported abuse tended to picture less of the positive emotions. Only the two most severely traumatized of the traumas cases showed an unusual amount of terror and helplessness contextualized. Overall, the CI score—representing intensity of the image—differentiated the groups better than did the type of emotion.     

Filmmaker to Filmmaker: Robert Gardner and the Cinematic Process

Choices made in the reissue of many of Robert Gardner's groundbreaking films—including Dead Birds (1964), Rivers of Sand (1973), and Forest of Bliss (1986)—on DVD demonstrate how new media tools can reinvigorate questions generated by the original works and how they can provide new insight into a filmmaker's praxis. The juxtaposition of differing media and the integration of commentary track conversations in many of these works with media makers and scholars such as Stan Brakhage, Robert Fenz, Ross McElwee, Akos Ostor, and Lucien Taylor provide unique vantage points from which to view the original documentaries and reconsider the lessons they yield. Gardner's concurrent publication of his diary and production notes in the book Impulse to Preserve (2006) contextualizes and personalizes these works, showing how they fit together in a career of innovative ethnographic production that has spanned over 50 years.     

Emotions in the Diary and REM Dreams of Young and Late Adulthood Women and Their Relation to Life Satisfaction.

Expanding on studies of the incidence and valence of emotions in dreams and their relationship with waking life satisfaction, home and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreams were collected from 30 late adulthood and 28 young women who had filled out a life satisfaction scale. Four positive and 4 negative dream emotions were self-rated. Both groups reported more emotions, with greater intensity, in home dreams than in REM dreams, particularly the older group. Regardless of age, intensity of negative emotions was lower in laboratory dreams than in home dreams, but there was no difference for positive emotions. The older women's home dreams had fewer negative emotions, with lower intensity, than did the young women's. Life satisfaction did not differ between age groups and was not significantly related to dream emotions. These results reinforce the distinction between home and laboratory dreams and question the relation between dream emotions and life satisfaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreams of female university students: Content analysis and the relationship to discovery via the Ullman method.

This study extended the research on the dreams of students by examining the actual content of female students' dreams and to what extent the content related to discovery via the Ullman method. Further analyses were conducted to examine what content categories significantly predicted discovery. Participants were 56 female undergraduate students who provided a dream and participated in the Ullman method of group interpretation. Dream content was analyzed via the Hall and Van de Castle method of content analysis. Many significant correlations were observed among dream content categories, discovery categories, and dream content and discovery categories together. Findings were representative of the sample being examined and provided evidence of the continuity hypothesis. Results both support and extend previous research on the dreams of students. Furthermore, specific categories of dream content were found to significantly predict discovery categories. Limitations and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual Differences in the Range of Sensory Modalities Experienced in Dreams.

The present study investigated the relationship between the recalled frequency of sensory modalities experienced in dreams and waking imagery abilities. Five hundred thirty-one undergraduate students completed 4 imagery ability tests and a dream recall questionnaire containing a question on the frequency of experience of the sensory modalities in dreams. A k-means cluster analysis of the Dream Sense Modality Scale indicated that the participants fell into 3 groups: the major modalities group, whose dreams were entirely visual, auditory, and kinesthetic; the all modalities group, who experienced all sense modalities in dreams; and the no modalities group, whose dreams were without sensory content. The participants' scores on the imagery tests in the 3 groups showed significant intergroup differences. The all modalities group showed the highest levels of ability in evoking vivid imagery and controlling visual imagery and the most frequent use of visual imagery compared with the other two groups. (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)     

Touring the Dream Factory: The Dream-Film Connection in The Wizard of Oz and A Nightmare on Elm Street

This essay explores the complex interplay of dreams and film, using an analysis of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) to illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach can provide fruitful insights into how dreams influence films, and films influence dreams. The essay suggests that reflecting on the dreams-film connection can deepen our understanding of the cultural dimensions of human development, particularly in the context of modern American culture. By using the methodological resources of psychology, sociology, history, film criticism, and theology, the essay argues more generally that the interdisciplinary analysis of films offers significant new possibilities for the development of dream studies. Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.     

What Do We Really Know About Mendeleev's Dream of the Periodic Table? A Note on Dreams of Scientific Problem Solving

As is well known, some dreams have been instrumental in important scientific discoveries. Kekulé's dream of the whirling snakes is probably the most famous instance though there was apparently no public written record of it until some 28 years later. Loewi, even in his own autobiographic material, appears never to have provided a written report of the dream that led him to carry out the experiment demonstrating the chemical transmission of nerve impulses to a frog's heart. Mendeleev's dream of the periodic table of elements in its completed form is apparently specious, despite repeated citations. Not only is there no dream report but evidence rests on a colleague's second-hand account. Kedrov's examination of archival material indicates (1) that Mendeleev had already discovered the periodic table before the alleged dream took place; and (2) that a dream quite plausibly occurred somewhat later that depicted an improved representation of the periodic table. Kedrov's reconstruction is consistent with other accounts of dreams and the process of scientific discovery.     

John Woolman's Light in the Night: An Analysis

This is an analysis of a religious experience in the night recorded in the journal of John Woolman, a colonial Quaker. As a basis for analysis, I try to clarify the data of Woolman's experience without presuppositions about causes, states of consciousness, three-dimensional space, or meaning. I then study the phenomena in the light of what we know about perception, dreaming, hallucinatory geometric forms, light, and other people's comparable experiences. Because different modalities of his experience appear to be in different states at the same time, I examine each part of his experience separately. There is discussion of the relationship of dreams to visions and hallucinations, the concept of discrete states of consciousness, and the distinction between simulation and authentic experience while dreaming. The article is both an analysis of a religious experience recorded in 1757 and a discussion of methods of analysis.