Dreaming : Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams
Human Sciences Press, Inc., New York City

Volume 6, Number 3, September 1996



CONTENTS

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

 


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