Human Sciences Press, Inc., New York City
Volume 6, Number 3, September 1996
Bergson's Theory of Dreaming
Patrick McNamara
Page 173
Continuity and Change: The Dreams of Women Throughout Adulthood
Lucie Côté, Monique Lortie-Lussier, Marie-Josée Roy, and Joseph De Konnick
Page 187
Individual Differences in Orienting Activity Mediate Feeling Realization in
Dreams: 1. Evidence from Retrospective Reports of Movement Inhibition
Don Kuiken and Tore Nielsen
page 201
BRIEF REPORT
Dreaming and Personality: Thick vs. Thin Boundaries
Michael Schredl, Peter Kleinferchner, and Thorsten
Gell
BOOK REVIEW
Dream Reader
By Anthony Shafton
Reviewed by Alan Moffitt
Page 225
Patrick McNamara, Ph.D.
Bergson's Theory of Dreaming
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Vol 6(3)
173-186, Sept 1996.
ABSTRACT:
Bergson's reflections (in "Le Rêve," 1901/1920) on the nature of dreaming anticipated modern cognitively-oriented accounts of the dream. According to Bergson dreaming is a selectionist process. When the brain relaxes its inhibitory powers with the onset of sleep, the cognitive system is rapidly flooded with a vast array of memory images. The cognitive system tries to arrange the proliferating memory images into some kind of narrative. A few of these memory images, by chance, roughly match the affective and physical sensations that still occur in sleep and are "selected" as the raw material for the dream narrative. The discordant assimilation of memory images with the current affective and physical state of the organism constitutes the dream.
Key Words: Bergson; dream formation; philosophy of mind; memory; selectionist theory.
Lucie Côté, Monique Lortie-Lussier, PhD., Marie-Josée Roy, and Joseph De
Koninck,
Ph.D.
Continuity and Change: The Dreams of Women Throughout Adulthood
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Vol 6(3)
187-199, Sept 1996.
The objective of this study was to determine whether changes take place in the
manifest content of women's dreams as a function of age and the psychosocial
changes that mark their waking lives. Forty-seven women from three ages groups
(26 to 35, 36 to 45, 46 to 56) kept a dream diary and 87 of their dreams were
content analyzed. Characters, settings, aggression, friendly interactions,
activities, emotions, participation of the dreamer in her dreams,
autonomy, achievement striving, themes and outcomes were the dream variables of
interest, as they were expected to be significant indicators of increasing
adaptive competence, productive energy, and masculinity orientation with
advancing age. Results provided strong support for the productive energy
hypothesis and mixed support for the adaptive competence one. The expected shift
toward more male-typed imagery was not observed. Findings are discussed within
the theoretical framework of women's development throughout adulthood.
Key Words: dream content; social roles; women.
Don Kuiken, Ph.D., and Tore Nielsen, Ph.D.
Individual Differences in Orienting Activity Mediate Feeling Realization in
Dreams: 1. Evidence from Retrospective Reports of Movement Inhibition
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Vol 6(3) 201-217, Sept 1996.
Abstract:
Existential dreams, which involve ineffectuality, sadness, and separation (Kuiken
& Sikora, 1993), frequently provide shifts in feeling that sensitize
dreamers
to aspects of their lives they have previously ignored. To better understand
that phenomenon, we examined whether individual differences in movement
inhibition during the orienting response (either while awake or dreaming) would
predict: (a) the enactment of dreams during awakening, (b) a lingering sense of
the reality of dream events, and (c) dream-induced self-perceptual depth. Three
studies using retrospective questionnaires and one using dream diaries provided consistent evidence of these relationships. Also, individual differences in
movement inhibition and in the preceding dream effects were consistently
associated with absorption (Tellegen, 1982), a personality dimension related to
openness to experience. Finally, results from one study confirmed that
dream-induced self-perceptual depth is more closely associated with the
occurrence of existential dreams, than with either anxiety dreams (nightmares)
or transcendent (archetypal) dreams.
Key Words: dream function; orienting response; self-perception; body
awareness.
Michael Schredl, Peter Kleinferchner, and Thorsten
Gell
Dreaming and Personality: Thick vs. Thin Boundaries
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Vol 6(3) 219-223, Sept 1996.
ABSTRACT:
The present study investigated the relationship between dreaming and thick
vs. thin boundaries, a personality dimension that has been identified in
clinical and research work with adult nightmare sufferers (Hartmann, 1991).
In a dream diary study with 50 participants, subjects with thin
boundaries, as indicated by the Boundary Questionnaire, reported more frequent
dream recall and more intense dreams than did subjects with thick boundaries.
Also, thin boundaried subjects were more likely to report that they had had
nightmares, especially recurrent nightmares, during childhood.
Key Words: dream recall, dream emotions, nightmares, personality
List of Issues/Abstracts | Instructions for Contributors |
Contact the Editor | Online Articles |
Announcements | Article Discussion Archive |
Copyright ©2003 Association for the Study of Dreams. All Rights Reserved |