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PubMed2001

The dream in contemporary psychiatry.

OBJECTIVE: This article offers selective reviews of cogent sectors of research regarding the dream in contemporary psychiatry. METHOD: First, the author discusses relatively recent research (1953-1999) on the neurobiology and clinical psychophysiology of dreaming sleep; second, he reviews experimental cognitive neuroscientific studies of perception, emotion, and memory and the putative interrelationships among them in generating dream imagery; and third, he interprets psychoanalytic studies (1900-1999) on related aspects of dreams and the dream process. RESULTS: Exploration for interrelationships among information from these three areas entails discussion of the mind/brain problem. These considerations illuminate some of the logical and interpretive dilemmas that enter into debates about Freud's theory of the dream. CONCLUSIONS: The author proposes a preliminary psychobiologic concept of the dream process and discusses, in light of the foregoing considerations, the importance of collaborative research for developing a realistic perspective concerning the proper place of the dream in contemporary psychiatry.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed2003

The fate of the dream in contemporary psychoanalysis.

Freud's metapsychology of dream formation has implicitly been discarded, as indicated in a brief review of trends in psychoanalytic thinking about dreams, with a focus on the relationship of the dream process to ego capacities. The current bias toward exclusive emphasis on the exploration of the analytic relationship and the transference has evolved at the expense of classical, in-depth dream interpretation, and, by extension, at the expense of strengthening the patient's capacity for self-inquiry. This trend is shown to be especially evident in the treatment of borderline patients, who today are believed by many analysts to misuse the dream in the analytic situation. An extended clinical example of a borderline patient with whom an unmodified Freudian associative technique of dream interpretation is used with good outcome illustrates the author's contrary conviction. In clinical practice, we should neglect neither the uniqueness of the dream as a central intrapsychic event nor the Freudian art of total dream analysis.

Dreams↗
PubMed1984

Deconstructing the manifest dream.

A major part of the analyst's task is to discover the basis for the patient's misidentification of his present life situation with significant but threatening events of his earlier life, now repressed and inaccessible to conscious recall. Reconstructing the patient's history is a crucial step in this process of discovery, but the dynamic relation between the present and the past must be reconstructed as well. The structure of the manifest dream contains the key to this relation. The imagery of the dream is a composite of experimental materials drawn from important drive-related events of the present and the past. The complex formed by the manifest dream and the patient's associations provides the analyst with data about both of these distinct sets of drive-related experiences. As Freud's discussion of his M elusine dream illustrates, one associative thread can be traced to an experience that incorporates a conflicted current wish. Another thread will lead to an experience in which a repressed wish of childhood has been expressed. Where the two associative threads converge, in the composite imagery of the dream, the basis for the identification between the wishes of the present and the past will be exposed. An understanding of the structure of the manifest dream helps to clarify some of the important theoretical issues left unresolved in Freud's writings. These include: the function of the day residue and the mechanism through which it is formed, the relation of the screen memory to the associative process, and the differing roles of condensation and displacement in dream construction and free association. A simple procedure is described for enhancing the recovery of the significant childhood memories whose details have been incorporated into the composite imagery of the manifest dream.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

The manifest dream in psychoanalysis: a clarification.

Controversies about the value of the manifest dream in psychoanalysis are usually a matter of semantics. The author concludes that two clinically meaningful questions about the manifest dream can be asked: Is the patient's report of a dream useful in formulating an interpretation if no formal associations to the dream elements are given? Inasmuch as such reports always include some kind of associations, and the analyst always possesses considerable knowledge about the patient, the answer to this question would seem to be "Yes, at least at times." In what ways can the manifest dream contribute to our understanding of the dream and the dreamer? Both the literature and clinical experience indicate that there are many ways; these are summarized in an appendix. One approach, the direct decoding of manifest dream elements, is discussed in some detail. Several examples of the undisguised appearance of memories of childhood traumatic experiences in the manifest dream are presented.

Association↗
PubMed1989

The traumatic element in the typical dream of feeling embarrassed at being naked.

Material is presented from three cases, where analysis of repetitive dreams of feeling embarrassment at being partially or totally naked was an important feature of the treatment. The indifference by the other people in the dream to the dreamer's nakedness was initially linked to perceived transference slights at the hands of the analyst, and later to repeated episodes of actually being treated indifferently at the hands of the parents. This indifference was related to latency or adolescent attempts by the patients to gain love or attention from the parents by exhibitionistic means. The stereotypical presentation of the manifest content of these dreams is seen as evidence for their underlying traumatic roots. Such dreams are likened to the typical examination dreams described by Freud, which have also been noted by others to have traumatic roots. This finding is consistent with my own work with certain repetitive manifest dream configurations and with Freud's (1920) reevaluation of his theory of dreams in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, wherein he noted that dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neurosis often manifestly repeated the traumatic situation in an attempt to master it retrospectively.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Oneiric activity and the analytical process. A semiotic perspective on Willy Baranger's theory of dreams.

This author reconsiders, from a semiotic perspective, the theoretical and technical ideas developed by Willy and Madeleine Baranger, especially W. Baranger's views on the function of dreams, the status of oneiric symbols and the further clinical-technical use of dreams in the context of the inter-subjective dynamic field, together with the basic unconscious fantasy that emerges in the analytic situation. She attempts to relate the Barangers' ideas to others arising from Peirce's analytic semiotics that would support a triadic conceptualization of dreams. The need to incorporate a pragmatic view of communication and of the processes of production of sense as contributions to dream metapsychology and interpretation in the case of non-neurotic patients is particularly emphasized. On the basis of the hypothesis of a described series of triads underlying the production and retelling of dreams, the acknowledgment of these produced/told dreams as intentional signs allows the presence of a continuous process of semiosis to be proposed. The author introduces clinical material to illustrate the communicative value of dreams through the textual analysis of the report and accompanying associations of three dreams. Such analysis takes a linguistic pragmatics approach that examines those aspects of meaning not accounted for by a restricted semantic theory.

Communication↗
PubMed2006

Dreams that mirror the session.

Dreams in which the analyst appears undisguised almost always depict violations of the setting. Often experienced as special, epiphanic moments, they give a glimpse of an intense, emotional reaction to traumatogenic or otherwise significant events that have occurred during the session or in the most recent previous ones. Probably, the essential aspect of these dreams can be found in the 'form of their content'. This may be paralleled by the narrative technique of mise en abyme or mirror-text. The dream appears as a story within the main story and the scene of the analysis is reflected anti-illusionistically. The fictional structure of the setting is emphasized. Its theatrical self-consciousness quality is revealed at its best. The author postulates that the transformative therapeutic value of these dreams derives from denouncing the referential illusion of 'concrete reality' and of 'what really happened'. For the analysand, they are an effective (i.e. emotionally intense) opportunity to discover the spatial articulations and the staggering refractions of the inside/outside, the textual/extra-textual, the psychic reality/material reality. In the continual comings and goings from one term to another, the work of symbolization is reactivated and the subject is constructed. Dreams that mirror the session, from this point of view, provide a model for conceptualizing the analytic work, and their significance goes beyond the specific phenomena referred to. A clinical case is given, in which some of one patient's dreams are considered as they occurred over a short period. In one of them, the dream-within-a-dream phenomenon is present.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

The countertransference dream.

Can the analyst's night-dream about his patient be considered as a manifestation of countertransference--and, if so, under what conditions? In what way can such a dream represent more than just the disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish of the analyst? Is there not a risk of the analyst unconsciously taking up and 'using' the content of a session or other elements coming from the analytic situation for his own psychic reasons? The author, closely following Freud's dream theory, shows the mechanisms which can allow us to use the dream content in the analytical situation: preserved from the secondary processes of conscious thinking, other fantasies and affects than in the waking state can emerge in dream thought, following an 'unconscious perception'. After examining the countertransference elements of Freud's dream, 'Irma's injection', which leads off The interpretation of dreams, the author presents a dream of her own about a patient and its value for understanding affects and representations which had hitherto remained unrepresented.

Countertransference↗
PubMed2006

Comparative analysis of multiple sleep latency tests (MSLT) parameters and occurrence of dreaming in patients with daytime sleepiness of narcoleptic and non-narcoleptic origin.

OBJECTIVE: To compare MSLT parameters in two groups of patients with daytime sleepiness, correlated to the occurrence and onset of dreams. METHOD: Patients were submitted to the MSLT between January/1999 and June/2002. Sleep onset latency, REM sleep latency and total sleep time were determined. The occurrence of dreams was inquired following each MSLT series. Patients were classified as narcoleptic (N) or non-narcoleptic (NN). RESULTS: Thirty patients were studied, 12 were classified as narcoleptics (N group; 40%), while the remaining 18 as non-narcoleptic (NN group; 60%). Thirty MSLT were performed, resulting in 146 series. Sleep was detected in 126 series (86%) and dreams in 56 series (44.44%). Mean sleep time in the N group was 16.0+/-6.3 min, while 10.5+/-7.5 min in the NN group (p<0.0001). Mean sleep latency was 2.0+/-2.2 min and 7.2+/-6.0 min in the N and NN group, respectively (p<0.001). Mean REM sleep latency in the N group was 3.2+/-3.1min and 6.9+/-3.7 min in the NN group (p=0.021). Dreams occurred in 56.9% of the N group series and 28.4% in that of the NN group (p=0.0009). Dream frequency was detected in 29.8% and 75% of the NREM series of the N and NN groups, respectively (p=0.0001). CONCLUSION: Patients from the N group, compared to the NN group, slept longer and earlier, demonstrated a shorter REM sleep onset and greater dream frequency. NN patients had a greater dream frequency in NREM series. Thus, the occurrence of dreams during NREM in the MSLT may contribute to differentially diagnose narcolepsy and daytime sleepiness.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

How can we define the sequential organization of dreams?

Little is known about the processes of sequential organization of dreams. To conduct experiments aimed at studying how this organization compares with that of waking narrative or day-dreams and whether it is specific to individuals or to phases of sleep, a preliminary analysis must be accomplished. We must be able to define the sequential organization of reported dreams. The present paper proposes a way to define this aspect of dreams, using different categories of connection between the successive events represented and a schematic representation of the sequence of events constituting the dream. Such analyses are based on a segmentation of the dream report into units at a semiotic level which does not correspond to the linguistic units of the report. Material collected in an interview on the day following the dream recording helps us to analyze the sequential organization. Examples of the method of definition of this organization are given. An analysis of the example shows that semantic links connect successive scenes of the dream that seem completely discontinuous from a narrative point of view.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

The Multidimensional Dream Inventory: preliminary evidence for validity and reliability.

The present study focused on the development of the Multidimensional Dream Inventory, an individual difference measure of dimensions of dreams. Items were administered to 151 college students. Consistent with expectations, results of an exploratory factor analysis of intercorrelations among items indicated a four-factor solution was appropriate. As a result, four dream-relevant scales were constructed, viz, Dream Importance, Dream Vividness, Dream Usefulness, and Dream Recall. In addition, these scales showed good internal consistency for research. Implications and uses for the Multidimensional Dream Inventory were discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1998

Modeling precognitive dreams as meaningful coincidences.

50 college students completed the Anomalous Experiences Inventory, the AT-20 measure of tolerance of ambiguity, and a frequency of dream recall questionnaire. Using path analysis we show that precognitive dreams can be modeled as accidental 'hits' with increased dream recall and the interpretation of such hits as 'meaningful coincidences' seems facilitated by a belief in the paranormal. As predicted, both factors are affected by tolerance of ambiguity, which provides the flexibility required to store and recall ambiguous dream information while simultaneously allowing dream recallers to assume a paranormal origin of their 'precognitive' dreams. Moreover, the fit of the proposed model did not depend on sex or age. Alternative models that provided a better fit to the data validated the roles of tolerance of ambiguity and belief in the paranormal in eliciting experiences of precognitive dreaming, but frequency of dream recall was not confirmed as a crucial factor.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Incidence of having dreamed and conservative political attitudes.

The association of political attitudes of conservatives and reports of their having had a dream was investigated. 48 female graduate students in counseling psychology were given the KJP Dream Inventory and the Kerlinger Social Attitude Scale II. Scores on conservative political attitudes were positively correlated with having had Dreams of Falling (.40), Dream Discontentedness (.31), Dreams of Being Chased (.40), and Dreams of Being Famous (.30). Negative correlations were observed between scores showing a conservative political tendency and scores on Openness (-.35), and Uninhibitedness (-.50), as well as incidence of Dreams of Sex (-.29). The character of conservative dreaming is discussed along with the study's relevance to past and subsequent issues in research.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Nightmares and bad dreams: their prevalence and relationship to well-being.

This study, for the first time, distinguishes between nightmares and bad dreams, measures the frequency of each using dream logs, and separately assesses the relation between nightmares, bad dreams, and well-being. Eighty-nine participants completed 7 measures of well-being and recorded their dreams for 4 consecutive weeks. The dream logs yielded estimated mean annual nightmare and bad-dream frequencies that were significantly (ps < .01) greater than the mean 12-month and 1-month retrospective estimates. Nightmare frequency had more significant correlations than bad-dream frequency with well-being, suggesting that nightmares are a more severe expression of the same basic phenomenon. The findings confirm and extend evidence that nightmares are more prevalent than was previously believed and underscore the need to differentiate nightmares from bad dreams.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Dream content of schizophrenic, nonschizophrenic mentally ill, and community control adolescents.

This study compared the manifest dream content of 20 schizophrenic adolescent inpatients whose medications were stable for at least four weeks, 21 adolescent inpatients with other mental disorders (nonschizophrenic group) matched for age and gender, and 31 matched community controls. All participants were administered the standardized Formal Dream Content Rating Scale (FDCRS), which evaluates dream-related anxiety, cognitive disturbance, implausibility, involvement, primitivity, and recall, as well as two additional scales measuring emotional expression and duration of dream report. The Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) was administered to the two inpatient groups. The community controls demonstrated more involvement and emotional expression than the schizophrenic patients; furthermore, they demonstrated more implausibility and had a greater duration of dream report compared with the nonschizophrenic group. In the schizophrenic patients only, elevated scores on the negative subscale of the PANSS were significantly correlated with lower scores on involvement, emotional expression, and dream recall. No relationship was found between the positive subscale of the PANSS and any of the FDCRS subscales. These results suggest that psychopathology per se, rather than the specific psychiatric disturbance, may be associated with impoverishment of dream content, and that negative, rather than positive, schizophrenic symptomatology may be influential in the dream content of schizophrenic youngsters.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Dreams and suicidal behaviour.

Oneirology, the study and interpretation of dream content, has been part of human experience throughout recorded history. In modern times, the interpretation of dreams has been used as a tool in the practice of psychotherapy for the purpose of developing insight into the individual's intrapsychic and interpersonal relationships. Ringel, Jung, and others have noted that the content of dreams may be used to assess the individual's state of mind with regard to suicidal intent. Litman has noted the difference between dreams related to suicide and dreams expressing the presence of a clinical depression. Death dreams of the elderly may be considered expressions of depressive symptoms, although this conclusion should be approached with caution. Taylor, Sanford, and others have noted that death dreams generally may be considered as the need for transformation within the individual's personality. The author's impressions taken from clinical experience as well as his experience in teaching university-level courses both in dream interpretation and suicidology are also included in this paper.

Depressive Disorder↗
PubMed1989

[Functions of the dream--I].

The presentation of the multiple functions of dreams as they are attributed to them today is the aim of the present essay. Contrary to the disdain of the dream by 19th century psychiatrists and the investigators of the physiological concomitants of sleep, recent authors stress the adaptive functions of dreams. Dreaming participates in problem solving and contributes to the restoration of a threatened homeostatic inner balance. In the case of heavily traumatized persons dreaming helps the individual in his defence against the traumatic impetus. Personal and scientific creative processes are largely furthered by dreaming. Only in a few special cases, as in malignant somatic disease, can dreaming become detrimental. Dreaming's full measure of usefulness is, however, developed only when taken into service either by the dreamer or a psychotherapist.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1988

The dream as religion of the mind.

Dreams are defined as a religion of the mind in the sense that they can re-ligare--i.e. unite in a complex relationship--the components involved in the construction of the mind and its representation. The paper discusses the processes of splitting and projective identification which are manifested in dreams and appear to be essential for the transformation of emotional experiences, the acquisition of knowledge and mental growth. On the basis of clinical findings, a revision of Freud's theory of dreams is proposed: the concept of an internal world dominated by good and bad parent figures suggests a theological function for dreams connected with a state of necessity. Dreams represent a real experience which, in analysis, becomes a representation of the internal organization in its immediate present. For this reason, work on dreams makes it possible to acquire knowledge of one's internal objects and of their relationship with the Self. The work on the internal world offered by dreams is made possible by the recovery of memory, the agency responsible for a fusion between current reality and that of infancy as reactivated in the transference. Finally, some aspects of the processes active in dreams are discussed, which make them similar to poetic texts.

Dreams↗