New issue: Dreaming

A new issue of Dreaming is out, including articles on emotion, culture, and the self. Here we bring the abstracts
Volume 17, Issue 2

Bicultural dreaming as an intersubjective communicative process.

Tedlock, Barbara

Research in the human sciences has undergone a radical shift in perspective from considering the world as a collection of objects (objectivity) or subjects (subjectivity) to understanding the world as a set of dialogical processes and psychodynamic relationships (intersubjectivity). Likewise, the ethnography of dreaming has changed from a simple gathering, arrangement, interpretation, and statistical comparison of dreams into an intersubjective dialogical communicative and interpretive process. Today, a number of fieldworkers collecting information on dreaming share their own dreams, associations, and interpretations with their subjects, and because of these sociolinguistic practices, they are becoming bicultural. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Emotions before, during, and after dreaming sleep.

Yu, Calvin Kai-Ching

The aim of this study was to provide a preliminary overview of the emotions before, during, and after dreaming sleep in Chinese people. One hundred Chinese participants were included in the study. Cheerful emotions, including interest, exhilaration, and enjoyment, were pervasive in the collected dreams, although anxiety was also a common type of emotion. Positive correlations were found between the intensities of dream, presleep, and postsleep emotions. Significant reductions in intensity were noted in the analyses of emotions preceding dreaming sleep versus emotions following dreaming sleep. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Gravity content in dreams.

Maggiolini, Alfio; Persico, Anna; Crippa, Franca

Flying and falling dreams are often listed among the most common of dreams. Aside from the pure form, in which the dreamer actually falls or flies, it is frequent to find situations in which the dreamer deals with actions or objects implying gravity functions, that is, climbing, floating through air or water, and going up or down on a ladder or in an elevator. By means of the analysis of 685 dreams of male and female subjects, aged between 10 and 32, we registered various gravity contents (falling, flying, water, climbing, descending, staircase, and elevator) and their interrelations. Results show the presence of these elements in 38.1% of the sampled dreams. The authors focused on the link between gravity contents and other typical elements appearing in the same dream (attack, loss, sexual relationships, the body, performance/exams, and nursing). Results tend to confirm a link between gravity content and sexuality. The results of our research are essentially consistent with the findings of an analysis in DreamBank (http://www.dreambank.net/) of the frequency of words related to gravity in a dreams sample (N=14,193). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Dreams of female university students: Content analysis and the relationship to discovery via the Ullman method.

DeCicco, Teresa L.

This study extended the research on the dreams of students by examining the actual content of female students’ dreams and to what extent the content related to discovery via the Ullman method. Further analyses were conducted to examine what content categories significantly predicted discovery. Participants were 56 female undergraduate students who provided a dream and participated in the Ullman method of group interpretation. Dream content was analyzed via the Hall and Van de Castle method of content analysis. Many significant correlations were observed among dream content categories, discovery categories, and dream content and discovery categories together. Findings were representative of the sample being examined and provided evidence of the continuity hypothesis. Results both support and extend previous research on the dreams of students. Furthermore, specific categories of dream content were found to significantly predict discovery categories. Limitations and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)

Representation of the self in REM and NREM dreams.

McNamara, Patrick; McLaren, Deirdre; Durso, Kate

The authors hypothesized that representations of the Self (or the dreamer) in dreams would change systematically, from a prereflective form of Self to more complex forms, as a function of both age and sleep state (REM vs. non-REM). These hypotheses were partially confirmed. While the authors found that all the self-concept-related dream content indexes derived from the Hall/Van de Castle dream content scoring system did not differ significantly between the dreams of children and adults, adult Selves were more likely to engage in “successful” social interactions. The Self never acted as aggressor in NREM dream states and was almost always the befriender in friendly interactions in NREM dreams. Conversely, the REM-related dream Self preferred aggressive encounters. Our results suggests that while prereflective forms of Self are the norm in children’s dreams, two highly complex forms of Self emerge in REM and NREM dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)