“History...Is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”.
Philosophers of history have posited a class of concepts known as colligatory concepts (CCs) that causally link a series of past events into a meaningful pattern that is evaluated as significant for historical knowledge and that contributes to historical consciousness. We tested the hypothesis that these colligatory concepts occurred frequently in dreams and nightmares relative to waking narratives and that they exhibited properties that plausibly allowed them to mediate historical consciousness. In our content analysis of 100 nightmares, 100 unpleasant control dream narratives, and 50 waking narratives (diary entries), co...
Source: Dreaming - May 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
When was your earliest dream? Association of very early dream recall with frequent current nightmares supports a stress-acceleration explanation of nightmares.
The stress-acceleration hypothesis of nightmares (Nielsen, 2017) stipulates that individuals with frequent nightmares have better access to memories—including dreams—originating in the infantile amnesia period than do individuals without nightmares. This was tested on an available sample of 17,014 participants who estimated their current nightmare frequency and dated their earliest remembered dreams. One-way analyses of variance with 10 levels of Dream-Age (1–10 years) as independent variable and log nightmare recall as the dependent measure were computed for all early dreams combined and, separately, for those who r...
Source: Dreaming - May 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“History...Is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake”.
Philosophers of history have posited a class of concepts known as colligatory concepts (CCs) that causally link a series of past events into a meaningful pattern that is evaluated as significant for historical knowledge and that contributes to historical consciousness. We tested the hypothesis that these colligatory concepts occurred frequently in dreams and nightmares relative to waking narratives and that they exhibited properties that plausibly allowed them to mediate historical consciousness. In our content analysis of 100 nightmares, 100 unpleasant control dream narratives, and 50 waking narratives (diary entries), co...
Source: Dreaming - May 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: McNamara, Patrick; Dietrich-Egensteiner, Luke; Teed, Brian Source Type: research
When was your earliest dream? Association of very early dream recall with frequent current nightmares supports a stress-acceleration explanation of nightmares.
The stress-acceleration hypothesis of nightmares (Nielsen, 2017) stipulates that individuals with frequent nightmares have better access to memories —including dreams—originating in the infantile amnesia period than do individuals without nightmares. This was tested on an available sample of 17,014 participants who estimated their current nightmare frequency and dated their earliest remembered dreams. One-way analyses of variance with 10 lev els of Dream-Age (1–10 years) as independent variable and log nightmare recall as the dependent measure were computed for all early dreams combined and, separately, for those who...
Source: Dreaming - May 11, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Nielsen, Tore Source Type: research
Exploring the role of need for cognition, field independence and locus of control on the incidence of lucid dreams during a 12-week induction study.
This article reports an investigation of 2 proposed theories, the predispositional and experiential, regarding the association of personality variables to lucid dreaming incidence during a 12-week lucid dreaming induction program. The study found no differences between those who did and did not report lucid dreams during the program on baseline measures of field independence, locus of control or need for cognition. There was an observed significant change toward a field independent orientation between baseline and posttests for those successful at inducing a lucid dream; with no statistically significant differences for ei...
Source: Dreaming - March 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Saunders, David T.; Clegg, Helen; Roe, Chris A.; Smith, Graham D. Source Type: research
Attachment styles and nightmares in adults.
A number of different causes have been discussed with respect to the etiology or treatment of nightmares. Among them, however, relatively little attention has been given to early developing emotional factors, like attachment. Previous results hint to a relationship between nightmare frequency and attachment style. The present study thus served to further substantiate this observation by investigating the relationship between attachment styles and nightmare frequency and nightmare distress. Results reveal that subjects with insecure attachment styles report more nightmares and more nightmare distress than those with a secur...
Source: Dreaming - March 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Belfiore, Livia A.; Pietrowsky, Reinhard Source Type: research
Dream recall frequency, attitude toward dreams, and the Big Five personality factors.
Dream recall frequency showed high interindividual differences, and research has focused, among other variables, on personality traits for explaining these differences. The present study included 2,492 participants measuring the Big Five personality factors, dream recall frequency, and attitude toward dreams. The findings support the notion of dream recall and especially attitude toward dreaming is part of a bigger lifestyle characterized by openness to experience. Although the relationship between dream recall frequency and neuroticism is explained by nightmare frequency, the question as to why attitude toward dreams is r...
Source: Dreaming - March 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Schredl, Michael; G öritz, Anja S. Source Type: research
The invasion of the concept snatchers: The origins, distortions, and future of the continuity hypothesis.
This article explains the origins and development of the continuity hypothesis in work by cognitively oriented dream researchers. Using blind quantitative analyses of lengthy dream series from several individuals, in conjunction with inferences presented to the individual dreamers to corroborate or reject, these researchers discovered that the same conceptions and personal concerns that animate waking thought are very often enacted in dreams. Other types of studies later supported this finding. The article argues that the cognitive origins and definition of the continuity hypothesis have been distorted by those dream resea...
Source: Dreaming - March 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Domhoff, G. William Source Type: research
Dreaming, reflective consciousness, and feelings in the preschool child.
LeDoux (2015) discriminates creature consciousness, in which an organism is awake and alert, processing currently available stimuli, from mental-state consciousness, which is characterized by the possibility of reflection about current or past events and the ability to imagine new situations or scenarios. He establishes criteria for distinguishing the two, and finds no other animal that can experience conscious emotional feelings, nor more generally exhibit mental-state consciousness. A plausible extrapolation of his argument to humans suggests that they share this inability until about age 5. Tulving ’s (2005) analysis ...
Source: Dreaming - March 30, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Foulkes, David Source Type: research
Inner ghosts: Encounters with threatening dream characters in lucid dreams.
Lucid dreamers may encounter not only friendly but also threatening dream figures in their lucid dreams. The present study of German-speaking lucid dreamers explored the frequency of threatening dream figures in lucid dreams and how lucid dreamers responded to them. An online questionnaire was completed by 528 respondents, of whom 386 had lucid dream experience. According to their reports, about half of the dream characters encountered in lucid dreams are friendly, but about a fifth of them are threatening. Threatening dream figures are encountered more by women and more frequent nightmare sufferers, but less by more frequ...
Source: Dreaming - February 20, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Stumbrys, Tadas; Erlacher, Daniel Source Type: research
Nightmare distress as a mediator between nightmare frequency and suicidal ideation.
In this study, we investigated the role of nightmare distress in the relationship between nightmare frequency and suicidal ideation. Study participants were 280 undergraduate students (Mage = 21.84, ±2.14 SD, 77.9% women), who answered “yes” to experiencing nightmares in the past year. All participants completed questionnaires on nightmare frequency (Nightmare Frequency Questionnaire), nightmare distress (Nightmare Distress Questionnaire), suicidal ideation (Depressive Symptom Inventory— Suicidality Subscale), and insomnia (Insomnia Severity Index). Mediation analyses determined that nightmare distress fully mediate...
Source: Dreaming - December 21, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Lee, Ruda; Suh, Sooyeon Source Type: research
Continuity: Knowing each other, emotional closeness, and appearing together in dreams.
Continuity between entities in dreams and those in waking life arises from memory. In broad terms, the people a dreamer knows are associated in the dreamer ’s memory, and during dreaming people associated in memory tend to occur together in dreams. To obtain details, we gave a dreamer a questionnaire about whether pairs of major people know each other in waking life, and if so, how emotionally close they are. The greater the emotional closeness of a pair, the more likely the pair was to occur in a dream together. The more often a pair co-occurred in a dream, the more likely the pair was to know each other in waking life....
Source: Dreaming - December 21, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Han, Hye Joo; Schweickert, Richard Source Type: research
"Violence, sex, and dreams: Violent and sexual media content infiltrate our dreams at night": Correction to Van den Bulck et al. (2016).
In this study, 1,287 Turkish participants completed a survey about their media consumption and their dreams the previous night. We measured the frequency of their media consumption and the violent and sexual content of the media they consumed on a regular basis and on the day before the survey. We also measured whether they had a dream the night before they completed the survey and dream content if they dreamed (51.5% dreamed). We measured whether participants had dreams with violent and sexual content. Similar results were obtained for regular media consumption and for media consumption on the day before the survey. For b...
Source: Dreaming - December 21, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: No authorship indicated Source Type: research
We dream typical themes every single night.
In light of the previous retrospective and diary-based evidence for the marked prevalence and recurrence of typical dream themes, this study investigated whether typical dream themes would occur across all successive REM epochs of the night. The sample contained 7 subjects, whose sleep was monitored by a high-density electroencephalographic system. REM awakenings were performed in accordance with the progressive-interval protocol. Besides free-recall reports collected via the REM interviews, the subjects were asked next morning to recognize any typical themes occurring in each episode of REM mentation using a provided list...
Source: Dreaming - November 20, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Yu, Calvin Kai-Ching Source Type: research
