Human Sciences Press, Inc., New York City

Volume 4, Number 3, September 1994

Dreams in Dissociative Disorders
Deirdre Barrett
Page 165

Measuring Dream Self-Reflectiveness: A Comparison of Two Approaches
Tracey L. Kahan
Page 177

Dreams in Sleep Apnea Patients
M. Gross and P. Lavie
Page 195

"Al the revers seyn of this sentence": The Enigma of Dream Interpretation in Chaucer's "Nun's Priest's Tale"
Karen Surman Paley
Page 205

Rainville, Raymond E.
The role of dreams in the rehabilitation of the adventitiously blind.
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 4(3) 155-164, Sep 1994.

Abstract:

The blind author discusses the impact of dream visualization on the waking adjustment of blind persons: including the role of dreams in overcoming the darkness response, the consolidation of waking impression in visual terms, the reminiscence of visual experience, and post traumatic effects of the onset of blindness as illustrated in dreams.

Key Words: blindness; dream content; rehabilitation; darkness response.
Available online

Barrett, Deirdre.
Dreams in dissociative disorders.
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 4(3) 165-175, Sep 1994.

Abstract:

This article reports on a survey of dream characteristics of 48 patients with a variety of dissociative disorders. For most of these disorders, recovery of repressed memories was the most frequent distinctive dream event. For patients with Multiple Personality Disorder, many other phenomena occurred including alters appearing as dream characters, alters who could orchestrate dream content, and even, rarely, integration occurring within a dream. The strong potential of these dream characteristics to facilitate the therapy of dissociative disorders is discussed.

Key Words: dreams; trauma; dissociation; multiple personality.

Kahan, Tracey L.
Measuring dream self-reflectiveness: A comparison of two approaches.
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 4(3) 177-193, Sep 1994.

Abstract:

Reflective awareness is the awareness of one's thoughts and actions and the deliberate direction of them. This type of "metacognitive monitoring" is assumed to occur infrequently during dreaming. However, dream researchers have tended to rely on the narrative report as an index of process features of dreaming such as reflective awareness which may, in fact, be under-reported in the dream narrative. The present study compared the evidence of dream reflective awareness obtained via two different measures; one based on the objective scoring of the narrative dream report and the other based on subjects' ratings of the phenomenal qualities of their dreams. The distribution of dream self-reflectiveness (SR) scores obtained via third person ratings was consistent with previous research. However, subjects' self-ratings indicated a higher incidence of metacognitive activities during dreaming than was suggested by SR scores. These findings underscore the value of asking subjects specific questions regarding aspects of dream experience that may not be spontaneously included in the dream report and highlight the value of utilizing alternative approaches to measuring dream metacognition.

Key Words: dreaming; self-reflectiveness; cognition.

Gross, M.; Lavie, P.
Dreams in sleep apnea patients.
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 4(3) 195-204, Sep 1994.

Abstract:

The present study was undertaken to investigate the influence of apneas on REM-elicited dream reports, and to examine the influence of clinically successful treatment of the apneas on dreaming. Thirty-three volunteers suffering from sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) slept during two nights in the sleep laboratory. Sixteen were treated with nasal continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) during the first night and 17 during the second. There was a total of 150 awakenings: 78 from REM sleep without apneas, and 72 from REM sleep with apneas. After apneas, dream recall tended to be higher (60% vs. 72%, p = 0.09) and dream reports were significantly longer (16 words vs. 24 words, p = 0.05), than after healthy sleep. No systematic incorporation of the apnea stimulus into the dream reports could be demonstrated. Dreams after apneas were found to be significantly more negative than dreams after healthy sleep (p < 0.01). This suggests that REM-elicited dreams are basically resistant to powerful internal stimulation. The stress caused by the apneas exerted only a very global emotional influence on manifest dreaming.

Key Words: dreams; sleep; sleep apnea.

Paley, Karen Surman.
"Al the revers seyn of this sentence": The enigma of dream interpretation in Chaucer's "Nun's priest's tale."
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 4(3) 205-212, Sep 1994.

Abstract:

Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" (NPT) is a cautionary tale about dream interpretation. After a particularly disturbing dream, one that strikes the reader as prophetic, the dreamer, a rooster named Chauntecleer debates its meaning with his paramour. The debate serves as a kind of review of the literature on the subject. Chauntecleer argues, in accordance with the writing of Macrobius, that dreams are prophetic "warnyge[s] of thynges that men after seen" (3125). He defies the dream and yet escapes the harm he was warned of. This reversal, combined with the tale's numerous inaccurate homilies, raises serious questions about the validity of dream interpretation, leaving the reader with a sense that dreams mean whatever we want them to.

Key Words: dreaming; Chaucer; medieval.