Facts About Dreaming

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IN THIS ARTICLE

 What Are Dreams?

 Why Do We Dream?
 What Do Dreams Mean?
 Why Do Nightmares Occur?
 What Are Lucid Dreams?
 Can Dreams Predict the Future?
 Why Are Dreams Hard to Remember?
 Tips for Dream Recall
 How to Make Sense of Your Dreams

Dreams can be entertaining, disturbing, or downright bizarre. We all dream

-- even if we don't remember it the next day. But why do we dream? And
what do dreams mean, anyway?
WebMD takes a look at what makes us dream and helps unravel the
mysteries behind dreams.

What Are Dreams?

Dreams are basically stories and images our mind creates while we sleep.
Dreams can be vivid. They can make you feel happy, sad, or scared. And
they may seem confusing or perfectly rational.
Dreams can occur anytime during sleep. But most vivid dreams occur
during deep, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the brain is most
active. Some experts say we dream at least four to six times per night.

Why Do We Dream?
There are many theories about why we dream, but no one knows for sure.
Some researchers say dreams have no purpose or meaning and are
nonsensical activities of the sleeping brain. Others say dreams are
necessary for mental, emotional, and physical health.
Studies have shown the importance of dreams to our health and well-
being. In one study, researchers woke subjects just as they were drifting off
into REM sleep. They found that those who were not allowed to dream
experienced:

 Increased tension
 Anxiety
 Depression
 Difficulty concentrating
 Lack of coordination
 Weight gain
 Tendency to hallucinate

Many experts say that dreams exist to:

 Help solve problems in our lives

 Incorporate memories
 Process emotions

If you go to bed with a troubling thought, you may wake with a solution,
or at least feel better about the situation.
Sigmund Freud believed dreams are a window into our subconscious. He
believed they reveal a person's:

 Unconscious desires
 Thoughts
 Motivations

Freud thought dreams were a way for people to satisfy urges and desires
that were unacceptable to society.
Perhaps there is merit with all these theories. Some dreams may help our
brains process our thoughts and the events of the day. Others may just be
the result of normal brain activity and mean very little, if anything.
Researchers are still trying to figure out exactly why we dream.
What Do Dreams Mean?
Just as there are varying opinions as to why we dream, there are also
different views as to what dreams mean. Some experts say dreams have no
connection to our real emotions or thoughts. They are just strange stories
that don't relate to normal life.
Others say our dreams may reflect our own underlying thoughts and
feelings -- our deepest desires, fears, and concerns, especially recurring
dreams. By interpreting our dreams, we may be able to gain insight into
our lives and ourselves. Many people say they have come up with their
best ideas while dreaming, so dreams may be a conduit of creativity.
Often people report having similar dreams -- they are being chased, fall off
a cliff, or appear in public naked. These types of dreams are likely caused
by a hidden stress or anxiety. While the dreams may be similar, experts say
the meaning behind the dream is unique to each person.
Therefore, many experts say not to rely on books or "dream dictionaries,"
which give a specific meaning for a specific dream image or symbol. The
particular reason behind your dream is unique to you.
Although scientists can't say for sure what dreams mean and why we
dream, many people find meaning in their dreams.

Why Do Nightmares Occur?

Nightmares, or bad dreams, are common in children and adults. Often
nightmares are caused by:

 Stress, conflict, and fear

 Trauma
 Emotional problems
 Medication or drug use
 Illness

If you have a recurring nightmare, your subconscious may be trying to tell

you something. Listen to it. If you can't figure out why you are having bad
dreams, and you continue to have them, talk to a qualified mental
health care provider. They may be able to help you figure out what is
causing your nightmares and provide tips to put you at ease.
Keep in mind that no matter how scary a nightmare is, it is not real and
most likely will not happen to you in real life.

What Are Lucid Dreams?

Have you ever had a dream where you knew you were dreaming during
your dream? This is called a lucid dream. Research has shown that lucid
dreaming is accompanied by an increased activation of parts of
the brain that are normally suppressed during sleep. Lucid dreaming
represents a brain state between REM sleep and being awake.
Some people who are lucid dreamers are able to influence the direction of
their dream, changing the story so to speak. While this may be a good
tactic to take, especially during a nightmare, many dream experts say it is
better to let your dreams occur naturally.

Can Dreams Predict the Future?

There are many examples of situations where a dream came true or was
telling of a future event. When you have a dream that then plays out in real
life, experts say it is most likely due to:

 Coincidence
 Faulty memory
 An unconscious tying together of known information

However, sometimes dreams can motivate you to act a certain way, thus
changing the future.

Why Are Dreams Hard to Remember?

Researchers don't know for sure why dreams are easily forgotten. Maybe
we are designed to forget our dreams because if we remembered all our
dreams, we might not be able to distinguish dreams from real memories.
Also, it may be harder to remember dreams because during REM sleep our
body may shut down systems in our brain responsible for creating
memories. We may only remember dreams that occur just before we wake,
when certain brain activities have been turned back on.
Some say our minds don't actually forget dreams, we just don't know how
to access them. Dreams may be stored in our memory, waiting to be
recalled. This notion may explain why you may suddenly remember a
dream later in the day -- something may have happened to trigger the
memory.

Tips for Dream Recall

If you are a sound sleeper and don't wake up until the morning, you are
less likely to remember your dreams compared to people who wake up
several times in the night. But here are some tips that may influence your
ability to remember your dreams:
Wake up without an alarm. You are more likely to remember your
dreams if you wake up naturally than with an alarm. Once the alarm goes
off, your brain focuses on the annoying sound and turning it off and not
your dream.
Remind yourself to remember. If you want to remember your dreams
and make a conscious decision to do so, you are more likely to remember
your dreams in the morning. Before you go to sleep, remind yourself that
you want to remember your dream.
Dream playback. If you think about the dream right after waking, it may
be easier to remember it later.

How to Make Sense of Your Dreams

If you are intrigued by your dreams or want to sort out the meaning behind
them, consider keeping a dream diary or journal. Here are some tips:
Write it down. Keep a notebook or journal and pen next to your bed and
record your dream first thing every morning, while the memory is still
fresh. Write down anything you recall from the dream and how it made
you feel, even if you can only remember random pieces of information.
Journal without judgment. Dreams are sometimes odd and may go
against societal norms. Try not to judge yourself based on your dreams.
Give each dream a title. This may help if you want to refer back to a
dream. Sometimes the title you create can provide insight on why you had
the dream or the meaning behind it.
Dreams have fascinated humanity since the beginning of time and will
likely continue to mystify us. And although science has allowed us to learn
much about the human brain, we may never know for sure the meaning
behind our dreams.

Why do we dream?
BY CHARLES W. BRYANT

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Getting More Sleep Image Gallery We aren't sure why we dream, but we know everybody does it. See
more sleep pictures.
BAMBOO PRODUCTIONS/GETTY IMAGES
The human brain is a mysterious little ball of gray matter. After all these years,
researchers are still baffled by many aspects of how and why it operates like it
does. Scientists have been performing sleep and dream studies for decades now,
and we still aren't 100 percent sure about the function of sleep, or exactly how and
why we dream. We do know that our dream cycle is typically most abundant and
best remembered during the REM stage of sleep. It's also pretty commonly
accepted among the scientific community that we all dream, though the frequency
in which dreams are remembered varies from person to person.
The question of whether dreams actually have a physiological, biological or
psychological function has yet to be answered. But that hasn't stopped scientists
from researching and speculating. There are several theories as to why we dream.
One is that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort through
everything it collects during the waking hours. Your brain is met with hundreds of
thousands, if not millions of inputs each day. Some are minor sensory details like
the color of a passing car, while others are far more complex, like the big
presentation you're putting together for your job. During sleep, the brain works to
plow through all of this information to decide what to hang on to and what to
forget. Some researchers feel like dreams play a role in this process.
It's not just a stab in the dark though -- there is some research to back up the ideas
that dreams are tied to how we form memories. Studies indicate that as we're
learning new things in our waking hours, dreams increase while we sleep.
Participants in a dream study who were taking a language course showed more
dream activity than those who were not. In light of such studies, the idea that we
use our dreams to sort through and convert short-term memories into long-term
memories has gained some momentum in recent years.
Another theory is that dreams typically reflect our emotions. During the day, our
brains are working hard to make connections to achieve certain functions. When
posed with a tough math problem, your brain is incredibly focused on that one
thing. And the brain doesn't only serve mental functions. If you're building a
bench, your brain is focused on making the right connections to allow your hands
to work in concert with a saw and some wood to make an exact cut. The same goes
for simple tasks like hitting a nail with a hammer. Have you ever lost focus and
smashed your finger because your mind was elsewhere?
Some have proposed that at night everything slows down. We aren't required to
focus on anything during sleep, so our brains make very loose connections. It's
during sleep that the emotions of the day battle it out in our dream cycle. If
something is weighing heavily on your mind during the day, chances are you might
dream about it either specifically, or through obvious imagery. For instance, if
you're worried about losing your job to company downsizing, you may dream
you're a shrunken person living in a world of giants, or you're wandering aimlessly
through a great desert abyss.
There's also a theory, definitely the least intriguing of the bunch, that dreams don't
really serve any function at all, that they're just a pointless byproduct of the brain
firing while we slumber. We know that the rear portion of our brain gets pretty
active during REM sleep, when most dreaming occurs. Some think that it's just the
brain winding down for the night and that dreams are random and meaningless
firings of the brain that we don't have when we're awake. The truth is, as long as
the brain remains such a mystery, we probably won't be able to pinpoint with
absolute certainty exactly why we dream.

“The dream is the reflection of the waves of the unconscious life in the floor of the
imagination” (H.AMIEL 1989).

“This day’s residue is transformed by dream work into a dream and made innocuous
by sleep” (S.FREUD 1932).

“I was never able to agree with Freud that the dream is a ‘façade’ behind which its
meaning lies hidden—a meaning already known but maliciously so to speak withheld
from consciousness” (Carl Jung, 1952).

Why do we enter a fantasy world several times a night when we sleep? Why do we
perceive imaginary events and perform imaginary behaviours and what do they mean?
Are they really a gateway, even a super highway, into our unconscious? Can we really
interpret our dreams? Will it ever tell us anything of significance?

Dreams can be frightening or reassuring. Dreams are “fantastic” in the sense that
impossible, illogical things can and do occur. In dreams you can fly; dead people come
to life; inanimate objects speak.
REM sleep:  Most of us dream on average one to two hours each night, having a variety
of dreams. Most dreams are completely forgotten and some people therefore claim not
to (ever) dream. Researchers have found that if people are awakened directly after a
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episode, many can recall their dreams fairly
accurately. A person awakened during REM sleep will almost always report a dream,
often in great detail. These reports indicate that people are conscious during sleep,
even though they may not always remember the experience. Brain wave studies show
we are very active. Also we know that men are likely to have erections and women
greater blood flow to the vagina at this time.

Types of dreams: It is said the word ‘dream’ is derived from the words for ‘joy’ and
‘music’. Many people talk of various different kinds of dreams: of highly lucid but also
vague dreams; of nightmares and of lovely dreams. Children from 3 to 8 years old often
report having nightmares but they seem not to appear in their own dreams much before
the ages of 3 or 4 years old.

Many report recurrent dreams, some which they fear,others which they long for. Some
believe that their dreams are prophetic. Nearly two-thirds of people claim that they have
had déjà-vu dreams. Certainly there appear cross-culturally common dreams to all
people at all times.

The flying dream is common: people report that they can fly like a bird, perhaps by
doing a swimmer’s breast stroke. Others report the falling dream where they fall out of
tall buildings or down dark pits fora very long time. Or they just fall over a lot. Many
dream of suddenly being naked and hence very embarrassed in front of others. The
chase dream is common: most often you are being chased relentlessly by others, or
perhaps you are chasing them. Students will know of the test/exam dream where you
have to sit a test and despite revision can’t remember anything, or worse, are paralysed
and just can’t write. The dream of losing your teeth is also surprisingly common.

Interpretations:  Inevitably there are various proposed interpretations of these dreams.

Does the teeth dream signal that we are very concerned with our physical
attractiveness?

Or perhaps it represents a loss of power and ageing, or the concern that you are never
heard or being over looked. Perhaps your teeth represent oral weapons and they are
falling out because you have been saying untruths about others. It has even been
proposed that it is about money: hoping a magical tooth fairy will appear and give you
lots of money.

But how to interpret the naked dream? Is it all about vulnerability and shame? You are
hiding some information, concealing a relationship, doing something you should not and
you feel guilty. Worse, you are scared of being found out, disgraced and ridiculed. Or it
could mean that you are feeling unprepared for some major test or task? One curious
feature is that you realize you are naked but no one else seems to be paying attention
to that fact. This could indicate that you have worries but that you really feel they are
unfounded.

Freudian ideas: Freud is given credit for developing psychoanalysis a

form therapy aimed at providing the client insight into his or her unconscious
motivations and impulses. These come about as Freud claimed, through the competing
demands/motives of everyone’s id, ego and superego.  Dream interpretation was a
favorite way of Freud to get to understand this conflict and so he would encourage
people to talk without restraint about their dreams.  This evaluation of the underlying
meaning of dreams is the hallmark of psychoanalysis.

In his view dreams concern one’s past and present and they arise from unknown
regions within.  Every dream at its core is an attempt at wish fulfillment. This explains
Freud gives us insight into our unconscious as the underlying wish touches upon some
forbidden matters.  This invokes defense mechanisms and the wish is not expressed
directly but only reaches the surface in symbolic disguise.       

The manifest content seen by the dreamer masks the hidden meaning or significance
behind the latent content which is what can cause anxiety and psychological
discomfort.  The dreams themselves aren’t direct representations of our unconscious
but need to be analysed as they are symbolic or metaphors for our true underlying
feelings.  Some symbols are widely shared because of physical or functional similarities
for example, but there is no simple cipher that can be generally applied.

Sigmund Freud essentially proposed that dreams arise out of our inner conflicts
between unconscious desires and prohibitions against acting out these desires, which
we learn from society. Dream interpretation was Freud’s favourite way to get to
understand this conflict and so he would encourage people to talk without restraint
about their dreams. In his view, dreams concern one’s past and present and they arise
from unknown regions within. Every dream at its core is an attempt at wish-fulfilment.
Dreams are, as Freud claimed, the ‘royal road to the unconscious’.

In dreaming various processes occur like condensation, where themes are reduced to

single images such as an open door or a deep-flowing river. Analysts are particularly
interested in displacement, where people, things and certain activities replace each
other. Then there is transformation, where people are transformed to be bigger or
smaller, older or younger, more or less powerful. Freudian theory leads to various
predictions about dreaming being tested. Thus males should have more castration
anxiety dreams than females, who would have more penis-envy dreams. Males should
have more male strangers in dreams who they fight with (the father in the oedipal stage
of development).

Critics point out that if dreams are merely wish-fulfilment, why are so many negative?
Freud based his theory on those few dreams (less than 10 per cent) that are
remembered and articulated by patients. There is also a serious problem of reliability in
 the interpretation of dreams, as different therapists offer very different interpretations.
Moreover as Jung pointed out, dreams seem to have similar content across time and
culture regardless of whether they are deeply repressive or surprisingly liberal.

Physical studies: Researchers have proposed an explanation for dreaming that does
not involve unconscious conflict or desires. In the REM phase of sleep, a circuit of
acetylcholine-secreting neurons in the pons with-in the brain become active, stimulating
rapid eye movements ,activation of the cerebral cortex and muscular paralysis, which
causes us to see images.

The eye movements a person makes during a dream correspond reasonably well with
the content of the dream; the eye movements are what one would expect if the events
in the dream were really occurring. The images evoked often incorporate memories of
episodes that have occurred recently or what the person has been thinking about lately.
Presumably the circuits responsible are more excited by their recent use. Patients
awaiting major surgery reveal their fears in what they dream about during the two or
three nights before the operation. Their fears are rarely expressed directly, being about
scalpels or operating rooms. Their reference is indirect, in condensed symbolized form.
Dreams often express what is currently most important in a person’s life, and not any
deep underlying wish-fulfilment concept.

What Do Dreams Do for Us?

Five answers to an eternal question
Posted Nov 11, 2009

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Freud said that whether we intend it or not, we're all poets. That's because on most
nights, we dream. And dreams are lot like poetry, in that in both, we express our internal
life in similar ways. We conjure images; we combine incongruent elements to evoke
emotion in a more efficient way than wordier descriptions can; and we
use unconsciousand tangential associations rather than logic to tell a story.

Freud essentially called dreams those poems we tell ourselves at night in order to
experience our unconscious wishes as real. Dreams allow us to be what we cannot be,
and to say what we do not say, in our more repressed daily lives. For instance, if I
dream about burning my workplace down, it's probably because I want to dominate the
workplace but am too nervous to admit that aggressive drive when I'm awake and trying
to be nice to the people who might give me a raise.

Freud certainly had a catchy theory about dreams, but it was also limited. For him,
every single dream was the picture of an unconscious wish. But people who have had
boring dreams or nightmares might feel something missing from that formulation. In
turn, recent theorists have tried to give a more accurate account of why we dream. In
the following post, I'll list some of the current theories on why, at night, our brains tell
strange stories that feel a lot like literature. I'd like to know if any of these theories
resonate with you, or if you have your own belief about why we dream.

(Many great literary minds were obsessed with their dreams. Samuel Coleridge wanted
to write a book about dreams—that "night's dismay" which he said "stunned the coming
day." Edgar Allan Poe knew dreams fed his literature, and he pushed himself to dream
"dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.")

5 Theories on Why We Dream:

1. We Dream to Practice Responses to Threatening Situations

Ever notice that most dreams have a blood-surging urgency to them? In dreams, we
often find ourselves naked in public, or being chased, or fighting an enemy, or sinking in
quicksand. Antti Revonsuo, a Finnish cognitive scientist, has shown that our amygdala
(the fight-or-flight piece of the brain) fires more than normal when we're in
REM sleep (the time in sleep when we dream). In REM sleep, the brain fires in similar
ways as it does when it's specifically threatened for survival. In addition to that, the part
of the brain that practices motor activity (running, punching) fires increasingly during
REM sleep, even though the limbs are still. In other words, Revonsuo and other
evolutionary theorists argue that in dreams, we are actually rehearsing fight-and-flight
responses, even though the legs and arms are not actually moving. They say that
dreams are an evolutionary adaptation: We dream in order to rehearse behaviors of
self-defense in the safety of nighttime isolation. In turn, get better at fight-or-flight in the
real world.

2. Dreams Create Wisdom

If we remembered every image of our waking lives, it would clog our brains. So, dreams
sort through memories, to determine which ones to retain and which to lose. Matt
Wilson, at MIT's Center for Learning and Memory, largely defends this view. He put rats
in mazes during the day, and recorded what neurons fired in what patterns as the rats
negotiated the maze. When he watched the rats enter REM sleep, he saw that the
same neuron patterns fired that had fired at choice turning points in the maze. In other
words, he saw that the rats were dreaming of important junctures in their day. He
argues that sleep is the process through which we separate the memories worth
encoding in long-term memory from those worth losing. Sleep turns a flood of daily
information into what we call wisdom: the stuff that makes us smart for when we come
across future decisions.

3. Dreaming is Like Defragmenting Your Hard Drive

Francis Crick (who co-discovered the structure of DNA) and Graeme Mitchison put forth
a famously controversial theory about dreams in 1983 when they wrote that "we dream
in order to forget." They meant that the brain is like a machine that gets in the groove of
connecting its data in certain ways (obsessing or defending or retaining), and that those
thinking pathways might not be the most useful for us. But, when we sleep, the brain
fires much more randomly. And it is this random scouring for new connections that
allows us to loosen certain pathways and create new, potentially useful, ones. Dreaming
is a shuffling of old connections that allows us to keep the important connections and
erase the inefficient links. A good analogy here is the defragmentation of a computer's
hard drive: Dreams are a reordering of connections to streamline the system.

4. Dreams Are Like Psychotherapy

But what about the emotion in dreams? Aren't dreams principally the place to confront
difficult and surprising emotions and sit with those emotions in a new way? Ernest
Hartmann, a doctor at Tufts, focuses on the emotional learning that happens in dreams.
He has developed the theory that dreaming puts our difficult emotions into pictures. In
dreams, we deal with emotional content in a safe place, making connections that we
would not make if left to our more critical or defensive brains. In this sense, dreaming is
like therapy on the couch: We think through emotional stuff in a less rational and
defensive frame of mind. Through that process, we come to accept truths we might
otherwise repress. Dreams are our nightly psychotherapy.

5. The Absence of Theory

Of course, others argue that dreams have no meaning at all—that they are the random
firings of a brain that don't happen to be conscious at that time. The mind is still
"functioning" insofar as it's producing images, but there's no conscious sense behind
the film. Perhaps it's only consciousness itself that wants to see some deep meaning in
our brains at all times.

What do you think? We are all authors, in a way, every night we dream. Is there a
mind behind what's written in your dreams? Why are your dreams of use? 
 The Neural Code and Dreaming
A machine can now predict what you dream about.
Posted Apr 21, 2013

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Dream research is bedeviled by its dependence on the subjective verbal report of the
dreamer. We cannot independently verify if a person has been dreaming. Alls we have
is his report that he has in fact had a dream. If we see the characteristic brain activity
patterns of REM sleep on an EEG machine then our confidence that that person is
dreaming is increased but never absolutely certain. When people are awakened from
REM they do not always report a dream. Nevertheless, most people, most of the time,
report a dream when awakened from REM sleep.

Even if we grant that a person is likely experiencing a dream when he or she enters
REM sleep we have no idea what he is dreaming about. To find out what people dream
about we have to ask them. Once again we are totally dependent on subjective report if
we want to study dream content.
It would be nice if we did not have to ask the person what his dream was about. If
instead we knew the basic neural code with which the brain processes cognitive content
then we could simply consult the code displayed in brain activity patterns and then
derive the content of the dream. Of course we are a long way from deciphering the
neural code the human brain uses to represent cognitive content BUT a recent
publication has moved us one step closer to doing just that.

Horikawa et al (Science, Vol 340, 4 April 2013) recruited 3 volunteers to study their
brain activity (as measured by fMRI and EEG) during the sleep transitional state (S1)
when many people experience hypnagogic hallucinations. When the volunteers
transitioned into this S1 state they were awakened and verbally reported their visual
experience during sleep. fMRI activity patterns were used as input into a computer
simulation program that treated the fMRI patterns as code for words representing visual
objects. Those visual object codes were labeled with words derived from the subject’s
verbal description of his visual experience during sleep. For example if the person
reported that he had seen a red house while the fMRI displayed a pattern X in the visual
cortex then the machine learned that the pattern X or a pattern similar to X always
indicated “red house”.

Once the machine learned a large number of these pattern-object associations it could
predict what the subject was seeing during sleep based solely on fMRI patterns. The
researchers did not have to ask the subject to report his visual experience. The machine
could do that (at least 60% of the time) if the current fMRI patterns matched those in its
repertoire of learned image-object pairings.

There are several significant implications and questions for dream research…First,
when Horikawa’s volunteers confirmed that the machine was largely correct in its
predictions of what they were seeing in their sleep it implied that we will eventually be
able to look at neuroimaging records of sleep states and be able to tell what people
dream about.

If, someday, we look at thousands of these neuroimaging records from a large group of
subjects and then put together a summary of what these people dream about, we can
then collect the associated dream reports from these people and compare the reports to
the neuroimaging records. If that comparison matches up nicely (beyond what you
would expect based on chance) then we can more easily trust people’s verbal reports
concerning their dream content. We can be increasingly confident that people’s reports
concerning their dreams are usually non-deceptive, veridical or true.

Second, as our knowledge of the impact of dreams on waking behavior increases we

will be able to treat people with painful dream disorders (like repetitive nightmares) more
effectively. If, for example, monster X always appears with fMRI pattern Y and drug z
eliminates pattern Y from the fMRI AND the patient reports relief after treatment then we
can infer that that dream image and its associated brain pattern was indeed causing the
distress.

Third, as dream science begins to identify certain recurrent dream content images as
strong predictors of waking behavioral patterns, the machine analysis of these dream
images can be used to predict waking behavioral patterns.

Fourth, it will be fascinating to compare brain signatures for recurrent dream images
with their waking counterparts. Does seeing a red house in a dream require the same
neural signature as seeing a red house during waking life? Horikawa’s results suggest
the answer is Yes but that might not be the case when we move away from the catalog
of simple visual images studied in Horikawa’s subjects.

Fifth, the interesting content of dreams most often concerns emotions. Emotions are
associated with neural signatures. Can the machine learn to predict emotional content
of dreams based on neural signatures?

Lucid Dreaming and Self-Realization

An interview with dream expert Beverly D'Urso about lucid dreaming
Posted Dec 04, 2012
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Source: Wikimedia Commons

When I went to graduate school, lucid dreaming was a concept everyone knew of, yet
knew nearly nothing about. Generation X missed the lucid dreamingdebates of the
1960s, 1970s and 1980s. After that, the debates faded out and lucid dreaming became
the geeky subject matter of a few liberal intellectuals hardly anyone had heard of.
Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception, perhaps misleadingly, brought the concept back
into the core of the minds of the masses.

Lucid dreaming is your chance to play around with the extraordinary abilities buried in
unused parts of your brain. Regardless of whether your are superhuman in real life or
not, lucid dreaming is a way for you to put the deepest areas of your brain to good use
while you’re sleeping. You can be a Jane Doe while awake and superman while
sleeping. All the obstacles of reality can be set aside, as you make trips to the sun or
the interior of the earth or test your craziest science experiments on your worst
enemies.

Source: Beverly D'Urso, used with permission

Lucid dream researcher Beverly D'Urso knows everything about lucid dreaming: She

has been a lucid dreamer since she was seven years old. She has worked with
psychophysiologist Stephen Laberge, the founder of the Lucidity Institute. She was the
first person to have a recorded orgasm during a dream. During her lucid dreams, she
has tasted fire, visited the sun and overcome a writer's block. She has done it all. We
recently conducted an interview with the lucid dream expert.

What does "lucid dreaming" mean?

Even though the term "lucid" means clear, lucid dreaming is more than just having a
clear dream. To have a lucid dream you must know that it’s a dream while you’re
dreaming. That's it. It doesn't require that you can control anything in your dream,
though control is what beginning lucid dreamers often aim at. People get attracted to
lucid dreaming because they want to be able to do things they could never do in waking
reality, for example, taste fire or fly to the sun. More and more experienced lucid
dreamers are realizing the benefits of lucid dreaming. You can use it to explore the
boundaries of your own agency and the limits of the universe.

What's the best technique for becoming lucid in dreams?

The best technique for becoming lucid is to actually become more aware and look and
listen and pay attention to details, because when you see things that don’t fit, that’s a
clue that you’re dreaming. To facilitate the process you can form the habit of examining
the environment or your state of awareness during the day. Mental habits you practice
during the day tend to continue in dreams. So you examine your environment during the
day, you examine your awareness, and then you may notice that something is different
once you start dreaming. Someone who has become lucid has much higher levels of
awareness—and obviously, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of lucid dreaming.

What is the phenomenology of lucidity?

Source: Wikimedia commons

Here is an example. I was playing around in a lucid dream and happened to be at a

campsite. Since I knew I was dreaming, I thought I might as well jump into the camp
fire. I didn't get burned. I was kind of playing around with the flames. I then decided to
eat the flames. I actually put them in my mouth. And I remember having the sensation of
them being salty! I was already pushing limits. So I decided to fly to the sun. I started to
fly sort of superman style—faster and faster and faster, almost exponentially faster. As I
got closer and closer to the sun I couldn't really see anything. I couldn't really feel my
body either. But I noticed a sense of vibration and sound and light. Obviously, there was
a lot of light coming from the sun, and I kind of stayed in this state which I can’t really
describe. So the phenomenology of lucid dreaming really is very different from the
phenomenology of regular experiences.

As lucid dreamers you occasionally participate in dream psychic contents. What

happens at those contests?
We have an online conference once a year that lasts two weeks. It was founded by the
International Association for the Study of Dreams, which I’ve been involved with almost
since the very beginning about 26 years ago. A friend of mine actually started it. We get
about 10 or 20 people who present either a short paper or lead a workshop.

During that two-week period we usually have three contests. A typical one is the picture
content. Prior to the conference an outsider collects thousands of images. During the
conference a random picture is picked, and a self-proclaimed psychic person will then
attempt to send that image to all the dreamers one particular night. The next day when
you wake up, you submit a report of what you dreamed, and the following day they’ll
show you the picture and you can check what kind of connections your dream had to
the picture. We have a panel of judges, and we also allow people to look at other
people's dreams and say what they think matches. Finally, there’s a first, second, and
third place winner.

Have you ever engaged in mutual dreaming?

Well, I’ve had a lot of experiences with at least attempting mutual dreaming. You set it
up in advance. You agree to meet somewhere, for example the Bahamas. Then while
you both dream, you travel to that place. When you get there, you tell your partner a
secret. After you both wake up you can check whether you really succeeded in meeting
by asking each other about the secrets you told each other in the dream. I haven’t
succeeded in this particular exercise.

A lot of people live out their fantasies in dreams. Does that ever seem to suffice
as a replacement for the same fantasies in real life?

Yeah, dream fantasies are usually much more exciting. There are so many things you
can do in dreams that you cannot do in waking life. You cannot taste fire or fly to the
sun or have sex with strangers without potential serious consequences. But you can do
all that in your dreams.

Have you ever experimented with sex in your lucid dreams?

Source: Wikimedia commons

Yeah, many times. At one point we were attempting to record sexual activity during lucid
dreaming in the Stanford Sleep Lab. I was hooked up to electrodes and vaginal probes.
My goal was to have sex in a dream and experience an orgasm. I dreamed that I flew
across Stanford campus and saw a group of tourists down below. I swooped down and
tapped one dream guy, wearing a blue suit, on the shoulder. He responded right there
on the walkway. We made love, and I signaled the onset of sex and the orgasm to the
experimenter. We later published this experiment in Journal of Psychophysiology as the
first recorded female orgasm in a dream.

How is lucid dreaming used as therapy?

Let me give you an example. Back in the early 80s I was working on my Ph.D.
dissertation. I’d done all my class work and I already had a topic, but I wasn’t actually
writing it all up. I wasn’t actually completing the degree. My friend suggesteded, “Well,
why don’t you work on your writer's block in your dreams?”

I decided to give it a try. In one dream I dreamed I was in my bedroom, but my

computer was in the wrong place, instead of being on the left it was on the right, so I
knew it was a dream. The first thing that happened was that I became totally paralyzed.
Even though I knew I was dreaming I couldn’t move my body. All I wanted to do was get
to the computer to start writing, and I kept telling myself, “This is my dream. I’m in a
dream. I should be able to this.” And slowly—like in slow motion—I got to the computer.
The seat had a hole leading down to hell. It was very scary but I sat down and let myself
fall into this pit in hell—and then I woke up. Since then I have had no trouble writing.

What are the spiritual benefits of lucid dreaming?

Well, it certainly makes you a more enlightened person. You learn to be in the present
moment and to notice your surroundings and take in things without being sidetracked by
random thoughts or the past or the future. That’s what all big spiritual teachers teach
you now: The importance of being in the present moment. That’s what lucid dreamer
have been doing all along. They are aware of the present moment with more than just
their physical body, because their agency is expanded to include a higher self.

Have there been any studies attempting to measure personality changes before

and after regular lucid dreaming?

Sure. There are people who have looked at the characteristics of lucid dreamers. One
study which I remember reviewing for a journal was about lucid dreamers noticing
things in change blindness and inattentional blindness paradigms faster than most
people.

Lucid dreamers are typically better at noticing things because of the heightened
awareness I mentioned before.

Could lucid dreaming be dangerous? Suppose people mistakenly think they are
dreaming and start doing crazy things.

No, it's not a potential problem for lucid dreamers. By definition, lucid dreamers know
they are dreaming, so they are not confused about when they dream and when they are
awake. However, non-lucid dreamers that could become confused between dreaming
 and being awake. People who are just starting out might want to take it easy and not
stuff fire in their mouth or jump out from a cliff to see what happens. I don’t think an
experienced lucid dreamer would ever jump off a cliff without first testing whether they
could float in the air.

Does lucid dreaming ever make you tired? Do you ever feel being lucid in your
dreams doesn’t let you rest as much?

People often say that, but I think it’s almost the exact opposite. I think there is some
value in non-lucid dreams, but those are the ones that are tiring. I mean, who wants to
be breaking up with a high school boyfriend all over again and be feeling all miserable?
Who wants to take that test and worry about some test result when you’re not even in
school anymore? It’s the lucid dreams that are refreshing and fun. Lucid dreams, not
regular dreams, give me energy and make me wake up feeling refreshed. You should
try it!

Berit "Brit" Brogaard is a co-author of The Superhuman Mind

People Who Do Not Dream

Some people get along just fine without dreams.
Posted Apr 21, 2012

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We all know someone who claims never to dream. Although the question has never to
my knowledge been definitely answered by science, it appears that there are some
people who rarely or never dream or never recall the dreams they have. At least this is
what they tell us.

Stepansky et al (1998), studied dream recall in a sample of 1000 adult Austrians. They
reported that 31 percent of this sample report dreaming 10 times per month or more, 37
percent report dreaming 1 – 9 times per month, and 32 percent report dreaming less
than once per month.

To really be sure that an individual does not dream we would have to follow him for
years and perform awakenings from REM sleep to see if he dreamed. If the individual
never reported a dream after years of awakenings from REM sleep then we could
reasonably conclude that either the person does not dream or that he lacks the ability to
recall dreams or that he is a liar (for some reason he wants to conceal the fact that he
does in fact dream).

While every human being so far as we know exhibits REM sleep, not every human
being reports dreams. It appears you can have REM sleep with very low dream recall or
possibly without dreams entirely.

There may even be groups of individuals who never recall their dreams or who do not
dream. Just as there were pre-modern tribal groups who made dream-sharing a central
part of their culture, I can imagine the opposite: a group of people who never cultivated
dreams and who therefore never understood what they were

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus reported in book IV of his Histories that there

once was such a group of people who lived many thousands of years ago in North
Africa near the mountain called Atlas. “The natives call this mountain "the Pillar of
Heaven"; and they themselves take their name from it, being called Atlantes or the
Atlanteans. They are reported not to eat any living thing, and never to have any
dreams.”

These few lines from the Histories have prompted many scholars, including many
speculative scholars, to link the Atlanteans to the putatively mythical island of Atlantis,
situated in the Atlantic outside the Straits of Gibraltar. Plato in
his Critias and Timaeus reported that a great civilization had existed at that point in the
Atlantic some 10,000 years ago (8000 years from Plato’s time).

The Atlanteans had achieved great levels of spiritual, scientific, artistic and technical
successes, but then faced catastrophe through war and natural disasters. Refugees
from Atlantis fled to North Africa, to Persia and elsewhere. In Persia the Atlanteans
hooked up with the magi and Zoroaster to initiate that great religious tradition.

In North Africa the Atlanteans settled near Mt Atlas and then interacted with the first
stages of ancient Egypt and helped to initiate that great religious tradition and so on.
The Atlanteans described by Herodotus may, according to the speculative scholars,
have been refugees from Atlantis.

It is not clear why beings from so advanced a civilization as Atlantis would not report
dreams. Whatever the case may be I could find no other reports of a culture that did not
dream.

While dreaming may be a cultural universal, it is clear that some individuals recall few or
no dreams over many years. These individual suffer no ill consequences from their
 apparent inability to dream. Dream recall apparently is not necessary for mental,
physical or cultural health.

References

Blgraove, M (2007) Dreaming and personality. In: Barrett, D., & McNamara, P. (Eds.).
(2007). The new science of dreaming (3 volumes). Westport, CT and London: Praeger
Perspectives.

Stepansky, R., Holzinger, B., Schmeiser-Rieder, A., Saletu, B., Kunze, M., & Zeitlhofer,
J. (1998). Austrian dream behavior: Results of a representative population survey.
Dreaming, 8, 23-30.

Myth and Dream

Are dreams the sources of myth?
Posted Feb 26, 2012

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Many people who have enjoyed and studied both myths and dreams have noted how
similar they are in so many respects. Both involve narratives about a hero (the dreamer
for dreams and some heroic or supernatural character for myths) interacting with
fantastic beings in both commonplace and surreal surroundings. In both myth and
dream the laws of physics are not always respected. Bizarre things happen and there is
often a struggle, a climax and then a kind of resolution to the story told in myth and
dream.

While there is little doubt that myths and dreams share many features I was never
impressed with arguments that dreams are the source of myths or vice versa. There are
as many dis-similarities between myths and dreams as there are similarities. We have
to respect the differences in order to understand each in its own right.

Nevertheless as I learn more about myths I am becoming more impressed by the

similarities than the differences. I think, in particular, so-called trickster folktales/myths
may even share causal relations with dreams—though of course I cannot specify the
exact causal connection as of yet.

How can a cultural phenomenon like a myth—a set of stories told round campfires or
enacted in dance and ceremony or celebrated in religious rites; how can these cultural
entities create a dream? Presumably dreams are influence by social learning just like
any other part of human psychology so it is not so far fetched to think that myths can
influence dream content.

Could it be the other way round as well? That dreams influence social behaviors of
groups? I invite the reader to do an experiment. Read a bunch of trickster tales from
around the globe and see if you don't agree with me that they are curiously dream-like,
unlike many other mythical forms.
 An individual living in a hunter-gather group of a few hundred souls has a dream
wherein he breaks social taboos. Since dreams are involuntary products of the
Mind/brain this individual can bring his dream to the campfire, share it with others and
not be held responsible for its contents. Thus the dream offers a vehicle for pushing the
boundaries around social norms. When several individuals bring such dreams to the
campfire and the dreams are synthesized and retold the following year they become the
beginings of a myth.

Most interesting for me is that the trickster myths and garden variety dreams both
involve what would ordinarily be called immoral behaviors. While a dreamer may dream
of sleeping with his sister-in-law he would not do so in reality or while the dreamer may
engage in physical aggression he would not do so under ordinary circumstances in
waking life. Similarly, in trickster tales the trickster regularly defies social norms, breaks
social taboos, has sexual relations with relatives, and generally creates mischief of all
kinds. The Algonquin trickster Manabozo, for example, commits incest with a sister and
chooses his wife in a menstrual tent—a definite violation of social norms for the
Algonquin.

But at the same time tricksters also bring innovations to the tribes; things like fire,
ceremonies, magic medicines and the like. Do similar innovations occur in dreams—
perhaps innovations or benefits for the dreamer?

Can Our Dreams Solve Problems

While We Sleep?
Remarkable new evidence of the power of 'dream telepathy'
Posted Apr 15, 2014

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It appears possible that people can intentionally dream details about the personal
problems of an unknown individual, simply by examining a picture of the target and then
“incubating” or planning to dream about that individual’s problems.

Distinguished cognitive scientist Carlyle Smith, a very careful and rigorist

experimentalist who is a Lifetime Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology
at Trent University in Canada, presented the data in a recent paper (Smith, 2013; "Can
healthy, young adults uncover personal details of unknown target individuals in
their dreams?"1). Smith was and is a driving force in the revolutionary transformation in
our understanding of how sleep can facilitate memory consolidation. The design of his
experiments on dream “telepathy” were similarly well designed, and so need to be taken
seriously.

Experiment 1 was a pilot study focused on the development of experimental materials,

procedures and dream coding techniques. I will focus here on experiment 2, in which 66
students were asked to dream about the life problems of a target individual whom none
knew. (Neither did Smith himself.) Participants simply viewed the photo and then
attempted to dream about the problems of that individual. They were told that the
person's problems could be health-related, emotional, financial, or any number of other
concerns. (Another 56 students followed the same procedure, but the photo that they
examined was of a fictitious face generated by a computer.)

Smith obtained the photo of the target individual from a friend who verified her actual
problem before the experiment began. The individual was a middle-aged woman with
multiple problems: She had multiple sclerosis, especially in her hands, requiring
frequent medication to reduce the pain. She was also the primary caregiver for her
mother, who was in the final stages of lung cancer. She had recently lost her husband
to an industrial mishap—he was accidentally crushed by a front-end loader, and in the
process, a limb was severed. The woman was also involved in a very serious car
accident.

To discover whether his subjects could dream about any of this woman’s problems
simply by examining a photo of her, Smith coded several types of elements in the
dreams of participants both before they attempted to dream about the woman (pre-
incubation), and after (post-incubation). The dream categories that were scored
included:

1. Any mention of torso or torso problems;

2. Any mention of head parts or head problem;

3. Any mention of a limb or limb problems;

4. Any mention of breathing or breathing problems;

5. Other health problems;

6. Financial problems;

7. Problems related to social or marital relationships;

8. Car/driving problems.

The study found that the proportions of dream elements referring to all these categories
combined was significantly larger for subjects post-incubation than at the baseline pre-
incubation level. The most-mentioned categories in post-incubation dreams were limb
problems, breathing problems, and car/driving problems.

Why Did It Work?

Were these striking results due to chance—a sort of indiscriminate elevation of all kinds
of “problems” in the post-incubation dreams? Probably not. In the control group, there
was no such elevation in post-incubation dreams. Nor did unrelated high-profile
problems like cancer, heart disease, or mental illness appear in any substantial way in
the subjects' dreams.

Here's one striking example of a post-incubation dream from a subject in the

experimental group:

"[W]oman has crippled hands and can’t open the pill bottle. The right arm does not work
and there is a lot of pain. Her hands are all crippled and rolled almost into fists.”

While these results are indeed striking and intriguing, the crucial comparison is between
the frequency of “hits” in subjects' post-incubation dreams and the baseline frequency of
the generic versions of these “hits" in dreams? In other words, how often do limbs, car
crashes and breathing problems occur in dreams at all? Do these post-incubation “hits”
rise above those baseline frequencies? Smith tracked baseline frequencies for these
topics in his subject's pre-incubation dreams but still found a significant rise in the
proportion of hits in post-incubation dreams.

It is reasonable to conclude that Smith has identified something more here than just a
statistical artifact.

Lets say that some sort of dream telepathy is real—and that dreams are more sensitive
signal detection devices than our daytime mental states. What could account for this
sensitivity? Smith mentions a few possibilities: He notes that correlated brain signals
between two isolated individuals has been documented using functional magnetic
 imaging. Striking instances of apparent dream telepathy and similar brain activity
patterns has been noted between twins in particular.

Whatever the mechanism, tests of the reality of dream telepathy should continue apace.
Use of huge dream communities, like those at dreamboard.com and
dreamscloud.com, http://www.dreamscloud.com/] should be enlisted. If hits continue to
rise to above chance levels, as in Smith’s studies, imagine if one had 200,000 dreamers
attempting to dream the details of a pictured individual's problems? Thousands to
millions of dreamers might be enlisted to dream about possible practical solutions to the
target's problems.

Then we might then really begin to understand the power of dreams!

1
 Explore 2013; 9:17-25

Why Do We Dream?
New insights into what really goes on when we drift into sleep.
Posted Feb 13, 2015

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Source: R.Iegosyn / Shutterstock

Science has made great progress in deepening our understanding of dreaming. Still,

there is no answer to the question: Why do we dream?

There are, however, a great number of theories being explored. While some scientists
posit that dreaming has no direct function—but instead is a consequence of other
biological processes that occur during sleep—many studying sleep and dreams believe
dreaming serves a primary purpose. Theories of dreaming span scientific disciplines,
from psychiatry and psychology to neurobiology. Some current theories suggest that
dreaming is:

 A component and form of memory processing, aiding in

the consolidation of learning and short-term memory to long-term memory storage.

 An extension of waking consciousness, reflecting the experiences of waking life.

 A means by which the mind works through difficult, complicated, unsettling

thoughts, emotions, and experiences, to achieve psychological and emotional
balance.
  The brain responding to biochemical changes and electrical impulses that occur
during sleep.

 A form of consciousness that unites past, present and future in processing

information from the first two, and preparing for the third.

 A protective act by the brain to prepare itself to face threats, dangers and
challenges.

There is not likely ever to be a simple answer, or a single theory that explains the full
role of dreaming to human life. Biological, cognitive, psychological—it’s very likely that
dreaming may serve important functions in each of these realms.

Like sleep, dreams are vulnerable to disruption from problems with mental and
physical health. There are a number of conditions (as well as medications) that may
affect dreams, and that can make dreams more difficult and disturbing.

Depression and anxiety often are accompanied by nightmares, and the presence of

nightmares may be an indication of the severity of depression. Research has found that
among patients with Major Depressive Disorder, the presence of frequent nightmares
is associated with suicidal tendencies. People who are depressed or anxious are more
likely to have stressful, disturbing, or frightening dreams, sometimes in the form of
recurring dreams.

There’s evidence that one type of drug commonly used to treat depression may alter
dreaming. Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors (SSRI) appear to affect dreaming in
several ways. SSRI may decrease dream recall—the ability to remember dreams. This
type of drug may intensify dreaming. SSRI may also lead to the presence of more
positive emotions in dreams. Withdrawal from SSRI, on the other hand, may lead to
nightmares and may also intensify dreaming.

Drugs and alcohol also can affect dreaming. Alcohol disrupts the normal, healthy sleep

cycle and leads to fragmented sleep. Consuming alcohol heavily and too close to
bedtime may alter and diminish time spent in REM sleep. Studies show that alcohol-
dependency is linked to dreams with more negative emotional content. Marijuana also
disrupts and reduces REM sleep. Withdrawal from marijuana and cocaine has been
shown in studies to induce strange dreams.

Certain sleep disorders may be accompanied by altered dreaming. Insomnia can

heighten dream recall, and also lead to more stressful and disturbing dreams.
(Depression and anxiety are also more likely in people with insomnia.) Obstructive sleep
apnea, because of its ability to disrupt normal REM sleep, can cause disturbed
dreaming with more bizarre and negative dream content. Narcolepsy, a disorder that
involves extreme daytime tiredness and altered sleep-wake cycles, can also lead to
more negative and bizarre dreams. Restless Leg Syndrome, a neurological
disorder and a sleep disorder, can also be accompanied by nightmares.

REM behavior disorder (RBD) is a condition where the normal paralysis that occurs
during REM sleep doesn’t take place. People with REM behavior disorder can move
during this sleep phase, and often act out physically in reaction to their dreams. This
activity can be violent—thrashing, kicking, getting out of bed—and can lead to injury to
the sleeper or a bed partner. We don’t know precisely what causes RBD, but it is
associated with neurological illness and injury, as well as to withdrawal from alcohol or
narcotics, or use of some anti-depressants.

Nightmares and disturbed dreaming are a hallmark of post-traumatic stress

disorder(PTSD), as is disrupted sleep. People who suffer from PTSD often experience
frequent and recurring nightmares, which may be accompanied by acting out during
dreams, with symptoms similar to REM behavior disorder. PTSD occurs in some people
who’ve experienced forms of trauma, including assault, disaster, war and combat.
Soldiers who’ve served in active combat often experience sleep problems and
disordered dreaming linked to trauma and PTSD. After years of observing a particular
group of symptoms among combat soldiers, sleep scientists are now proposing the
creation of a new sleep disorder: Trauma Associated Sleep Disorder, with symptoms
that include nightmares, sleepwalkingand other disruptive nighttime behaviors.

Altered dreaming is also linked to degenerative neurological conditions,

including Parkinson’s disease and some forms of dementia. Violent and aggressive
dreams, along with RBD—physically acting out during dreams—are frequent symptoms
of neurological degeneration. These dream-related symptoms also have been identified
as a strong predictor of future development of degenerative neurological disease.
Studies show that REM behavior disorder (RBD) is a strong predictor for both some
types of dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

What about dreaming’s influence over our waking lives? Dreaming is a universal,
enduring aspect of being human (though not limited to humans, since animals dream as
well). Dreaming is something we do daily from the time we are very young to very old.
Are dreams more than a nightly de-cluttering of the mind? Are there ways that dreams
might help us live better? There is a long-held view of dreams as a creative portal—and
scientific study may be giving that belief some credence. Evidence suggests that
dreams may assist in daytime function and performance, especially as they relate
to creativity and problem solving.

Both testimonies from creative people and contemporary scientific research suggest

that dreams are a creative landscape for the mind. One study of musicians’ dreams
found that not only did they dream frequently of music, but nearly half of the music they
recalled from their dreams was unfamiliar and novel to them, an indication that
composing is possible in dreams. Paul McCartney famously credited the composition of
The Beatles song “Yesterday” to a dream. Other artists, from the poet William Blake to
the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, have claimed to rely on dreams for creative inspiration
and guidance. The golfer Jack Nicklaus solved a nagging problem with his golf swing
after sorting out the problem in a dream. 

Recent research examined the role of dreams in problem solving, using a group of lucid

dreamers. They found that lucid dreamers could use their dreams effectively to solve
creative problems (in the case of the study, the creative problem was crafting a
metaphor as directed by researchers). Studies like this one suggest dreams may be
fertile territory for influencing and enhancing our waking frame of mind.
 More broadly, dreams provide us with insight about what’s preoccupying us, troubling
us, engaging our thoughts and emotions. Often healing, often mysterious, always
fascinating, dreams can both shape us and show us who we are.

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD

The Sleep Doctor™

www.thesleepdoctor.com

Are Dreams Required for Memory?

Are dreams necessary for memory or do they merely reflect memory
processes?
Posted Feb 18, 2016

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There are three schools of thought or conjectures regarding the role, if any, that dreams
might play in memory consolidation: 1) they play no role; 2) they reflect more
fundamental memory consolidation processes and 3) dreams are required for memory
consolidation.

In favor of conjecture 1 is the fact that people who do not dream or at least who recall
few dreams seem not to be particularly impaired in terms of memory consolidation—
though it has to be admitted this issue has not been studied extensively. Animals
probably do not experience the same kinds of narrativized phenomenal experiences we
experience during REM sleep though they very likely do experience dream images.
They seem to function very well without narrativized dreams.

When we look directly at dream content in humans, episodic elements that make up
episodic memories are largely absent in dreams (Fosse et al., 2003).  But we should not
expect to find fully formed memory episodes in dreams if dreams are causally required
for encoding of informational elements into long term memory stores. Instead we should
find exactly what we do find in dreams: fragmented images, thoughts, units or features
of multi-modal episodes such as characters, background settings, colors, and especially
emotions. Emotions are crucial for consolidation of memories as they tell the memory
system what informational elements should or should not be integrated into memory.

Most dream scientists appear to favor conjecture 2—the idea that dreams merely reflect
more fundamental memory processing. In favor of conjecture 2 there is the dream lag
effect (Nielsen et al., 2004) wherein images about experiences that took place around a
week (5–7 days) prior to the dream re-appear in the dream. Presumably it is these
images from experiences in the past week that are selected by the system to be stored
in long-term memory. (It would be interesting to study whether the images that re-
appear in dreams are accessible to recall some months later.)
I myself believe that dreams are causally implicated in memory consolidation—at least
for emotionally significant experiences. In short, that conjecture 3 is correct. The
success of image rehearsal therapy for frequent nightmare sufferers suggests that
alteration of dream imagery and dream scripts is necessary if emotionally charged
images are to be integrated successfully into long-term memory. The dream/nightmare
images themselves matter. So while conjectures 1 (dreams play no role in memory) and
2 (dreams merely reflect memory processes) cannot be ruled out, a restrictive version of
number 3 (dreams are required) is becoming more plausible.

Several authors (Llewellyn 2013; Levin and Nielsen, 2007; Horton and Malinowski;
2015) have recently presented models of how dream images could facilitate memory
consolidation processes. I have discussed the Llewellyn and the Levin and Nielsen
models previously on this blog so wish to mention here briefly the Horton and
Malinowski model, as they attempt to take into account the fact that dreams are very
obviously concerned with autobiographical experiences and memories.  If we want to
discover if and how dreams participate in the memory consolidation process the most
obvious place to look is at autobiographical memory.

The basic mechanism that Horton and Malinowski propose (as far as I can see) is that
complex multi-modal elements (complete autobiographical experiences) are
decomposed during the dream state into decontextualized elements/images that are
then recombined in novel ways to support consolidation and creativity. They write that
“The rebinding of memory sources occurs when the brain enters a hyperassociative,
reflexive state during both REM and non-REM sleep.” The hyperassociative state is
thought to be due to the relaxation of frontal executive control processes during sleep
(especially REM).  Horton and Malinowski point out that decontextualization process
leads to the ability of all these fragmented / disconnected images/elements can be more
easily consolidated into long term memory because they can now relate or semantically
connect up with any number of other elements (hyperassociativity).  All this makes
sense to me and is consistent with Llewellyn's associative model and Nielsen and
Levin’s model of the integration of emotional and traumatic memories into long term
memory. Repetitive nightmares can be conceived as a breakdown in the
decontextualization process. The multimodal original autobiographical experience is not
effectively decomposed so it sits in working memory in the dream state continually
attempting integration into long term memory but failing. But it loses none of its
emotional or traumatic force so the individual suffers its experience over and over again.

These recent models of the role of dreams in consolidation of emotional and

autobiographical memories need empirical testing. if we find that dreams are in fact
causally necessary for memory consolidation then we will have at least one empirically
confirmed function for dreaming: it facilitates memory consolidation. The
decontextualization process in particular needs intensive investigation as it is central to
the memory consolidation process and may be crucial for selection of what does and
does not get into long term memory.

Horton C. L. and  Malinowski, J.;  (2015) Autobiographical memory and

hyperassociativity in the dreaming brain: implications for memory consolidation in sleep.
Front Psychol. 2015; 6: 874. doi:  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00874 PMCID: PMC4488598

Llewellyn S. (2013). Such stuff as dreams are made on? Elaborative encoding, the
ancient art of memory, and the hippocampus. Behav. Brain Sci. 36, 589–659.
10.1017/S0140525X12003135 [PubMed] [Cross Ref]

Levin R., Nielsen T. (2007). Disturbed dreaming, posttraumatic stress disorder, and

affect distress: a review and neurocognitive model. Psychol. Bull. 133, 482–528.
10.1037/0033-2909.133.3.482 [PubMed]

Nielsen T. A., Kuiken D., Alain G., Stenstrom P., Powell R. A. (2004). Immediate and
delayed incorporations of events into dreams: further replication and implications for
dream function. J. Sleep Res. 13, 327–336. 10.1111/j.1365-2869.2004.00421.x
[PubMed] [Cross Ref]

Fosse M. J., Fosse R., Hobson J. A., Stickgold R. J. (2003). Dreaming and episodic
memory: a functional dissociation? J. Cogn. Neurosci. 15, 1–9. [PubMed]
 Frequent Nightmares
Nightmares are not always linked to past trauma.
Posted Jun 19, 2012

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There is a popular misconception out there about what causes repetitive nightmares.

Most people seem to think that frequent nightmares are caused by some sort of
emotional trauma or haunted past. But that is not really the case.

Certainly there is a class of nightmare sufferers who have experienced trauma and their
nightmares are clearly linked to that trauma. But there is another class of sufferers who
do not fit the stereotype. 
There are many people who experience frequent nightmares who have no special
histories of trauma –emotional or otherwise. So we need to look at other potential
causative factors. 

In my 2008 book on nightmares (McNamara, P. (2008). Nightmares: The science and

solution of those frightening visions during sleep. Westport, CT: Praeger Perspectives ),
I suggested that one overlooked factor was the balance between REM and NREM sleep
amounts the individual experiences on a nightly basis. 

The normal balance between REM and slow wave NREM sleep (SWS) was modeled by
Borbély and Wirz-Justice back in 1982. Their model has been widely successful in
capturing the need to catch-up on lost sleep when the balance between REM and
NREM is upset due to sleeplessness/insomnia or some other perturbation. 

Normal sleep is under homeostatic control and requires a balance between REM/NREM
sleep amount and intensity. In the Borbely/Wirz-Justice ‘two-process’ model of sleep
regulation a sleep need process (Process S) increases during waking (or sleep
deprivation) and decreases during sleep. This part of the model indexes restorative
aspects of sleep. Process S is proposed to interact with input from the light-regulated
circadian system (Process C) that is independent of sleep and wakefulness rhythms.
Slow-wave delta activity (SWA) is taken as an indicator of the time course of Process S
because SWA is known to correlate with arousal thresholds and to markedly increase
during the previous waking period and during the rebound period after sleep deprivation
in all mammals studied. Once a threshold value of Process S is reached (i.e., once the
appropriate amount and intensity of SWS is reached), Process C will be activated.
Simulations using the model’s assumptions show that the homeostatic component of
sleep falls in a sigmoidal manner during waking and rises in a saturating exponential
manner during sleep.

The two-process model predicts that both REM and NREM are under homeostatic
control and mutually inhibit one another’s expression. Too much REM is associated with
reductions in SWS and vice versa. Borbély’s model tells us how sleep intensity is
adjusted depending on sleep need. If an animal goes without sleep for too long the urge
to sleep builds up and once sleep is initiated the animal spends an inordinate amount of
time in SWS and only after that is accomplished is REM sleep made up.

In the case of nightmares, the available data suggest that there is too much REM and
too little SWS and thus the REM/SWS balance is lost. A recent report from a Hungarian
group in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (Simor P,
Horváth K, Gombos F, Takács KP, Bódizs R.; Disturbed dreaming and sleep quality:
altered sleep architecture in subjects with frequent nightmares. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin
Neurosci. 2012 Apr 24. [Epub ahead of print]) the authors investigated the sleep
architecture of 17 individuals with frequent nightmares and 23 control subjects. Now it is
important to note that these data are extremely valuable because it is so hard to get
polysomnographic studies on frequent nightmare sufferers for a variety of reasons.

In the Simor et al study the authors claim that they found that the subjects with
nightmares evidenced a reduced amount of slow wave sleep, increased nocturnal
awakenings, and longer durations of REM sleep (“that was mediated by heightened
negative affect”). I have not yet read the paper so the above summary is based on the
abstract. The basic finding however is clear: people with frequent nightmares have a
measureable decrease in slow wave sleep and a increase in REM sleep and the latter
was related with negative affect. 

Whether or not one can argue that the imbalance between SWS and REM in nightmare
sufferers is causative or contributory it may be that one avenue of treatment for frequent
nightmares is to restore the REM/NREM balance. That can be done pharmacologically
or sometimes merely by shifting sleep schedules (i.e. treating the nightmare disorder as
a disorder of circadian rhythms) and observing strict sleep hygiene habits. I do not wish
to make things sound so simple but there may be a small number of nightmare sufferers
who respond to these simple interventions.

References
 Borbély, A. A., & Wirz-Justice, A. (1982). Sleep, sleep deprivation and depression: A
hypothesis derived from a model of sleep regulation. Human Neurobiology, 1(3), 205-
210.

Dreaming in Depression (And Other

Mental Illness)
A review of psychological disorders associated with disturbed
dreaming
Posted Jan 25, 2016

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While occasional nightmares are a common and normal responses to waking stress,

more frequent disturbed dreams and nightmares may be indicative of underlying
psychopathology. In the more benign case, the frequency and intensity of disturbing
dreams may show a progression and resolution over time, whereas chronic nightmares
are repetitive, persistent, and associated with lower psychological well-being, as well as
histories of trauma or abuse.1 In fact, frequent and distressing nightmares, along with
several other qualities of disturbed dreaming, such as changes in emotional intensity,
increased bizarreness, or unusual character interactions, have been associated with
specific psychological disorders, including depression, schizophrenia, and personality
disorder.

Depression.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, depressed patients report dreams with more negative mood
and emotion than control subjects, as well as more failures and misfortunes (compared
to schizophrenics).2,13 Patients with depression also experience more frequent
nightmares.4,14 Further, depressed patients with a history of suicidal thoughts or
behaviors report more death themes in their dreams. However, one study found that
depressed patients reported less negative, but more neutral affect in their dreams; the
authors interpret this finding to be consistent with the affective flattening seen in
depression. Further, one study of bipolar disorder, found that shifts from neutral or
negative dream content (as in depression) towards more bizarre and unrealistic dreams
can predict alterations between depressive and manic states. 16 This suggests that shifts
in affective content of dreaming may occur congruently with vacillations in waking mood
in depression.

Besides affective content, depressed patients have been found to play a relatively
passive role in their dreams, along with reporting less bizarre dreams, lower dream
recall frequency, and less detailed dream reports. 17,18 One study repeatedly awakened
depressed patients 5 minutes into REM sleep episodes, a period that typically promotes
high dream recall, and found that depressed patients were consistently unable to recall
their dreams.19 These findings altogether are suggestive of a relative inhibition or
flattening of dream content in depressed patients.

Schizophrenia.
Several studies have found the dreams of schizophrenic patients to contain heightened
levels of anxiety and negative affect. For instance, they report higher frequencies of
hostility in their dreams in comparison to controls, specifically increased hostility
directed towards the dreamer.2,3 They also have more frequent nightmares than healthy
subjects.4,5

When assessing the character involvement in the dreams of schizophrenics, several

studies have found presence of more strangers, fewer familiar characters or friends, as
well as an idiosyncratic finding that the patient is often not the main character of the
dream.6-9 The combination of anxious and apprehensive dreams, and perceived
hostility from strangers and unfamiliar characters is consistent with experiences of
persecutory delusions in waking life.

Inconsistency in reports on bizarreness include results of at times more bizarreness and

implausibility, but at other times, no differences in bizarreness of dreams of patients
compared to controls.10-12 This inconsistency may be due to the methodology use for
rating dream bizarreness; for instance, one study showed that schizophrenics self-rate
their dreams as less bizarre than judges do (perhaps because they are so used to how
bizarre their dreams are).8 On the contrary, waking daydreams are consistently found to
be more bizarre in schizophrenic patients.

In general, the increased negative affect, higher frequency of nightmares, and unusual
character profile of patients’ dreams is consistent with waking symptoms of
schizophrenia.

Personality Disorder.

Patients with borderline personality disorder experience more negative dreams, as well

as more distress within their dreams and after awakening from dreams. 20,21 Further,
personality disorder is consistently associated with higher-than-average nightmare
frequency,20-22 and increasing nightmare frequency is associated with more severe
symptoms in personality disorder.23 Some researchers suggest that these chronic
nightmares may be related to childhood traumatic experiences, which are often
implicated in the development of personality disorder. 24

However, in another study, character interactions in the dreams of personality

disordered patients were found to contain more friendliness and less aggressiveness,
as well as less confusion than control subjects dreams.25 They also contained
heightened levels of sensory vividness, including movement and auditory attributes.
These findings seem somewhat contradictory to the prevalence of nightmares and
anxious, distressing dreams, but could be indicative of a general intensification of
dreaming processes that may at times result in nightmares, or at times in vivid non-
nightmare dreams, depending on current levels of stress.

Clinical implications of disturbed dreaming in psychological disorders.

Patterns in disturbed dreaming may be useful as indicators of psychiatric progression.

For instance, increasing reference to death in the dreams of depressed patients could
reveal the presence of suicidal thoughts, and is thus a potent cue for clinicians,
especially since nightmares themselves are associated with greater risk for suicide. 22 On
the other hand, shifts towards more positive themes may be indicative of successful
treatment. As mentioned, in bipolar disorder, shifts from negative to bizarre dreams may
reflect shifts from depressive to manic states, and can thus alert the patient/clinician to
oncoming symptoms.16 The prevalence of nightmares in all three psychological disorders
further suggests that treatments incorporating targeted nightmare reduction may be
more successful than those that neglect nightmares. In general, assessment of dreams
can serve as a useful barometer for changes in psychopathology and can thus be
effectively used within treatment contexts.
 Incubus Attack
Are people visited by demons during the night?
Posted Sep 08, 2008

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Source:

Jason struggled to open his eyes as the oppressive pressure on his chest became more
severe. He sensed a presence in the room and felt her weight pushing down on him as
he struggled to breath. As his eyes opened slightly he saw the shadowy figure above in
the dimly lit bedroom. Her presence and a vague sense of dread filled him as he
realized that he could not move. No matter how hard he willed his body to come to life
and take protective action, nothing happened. What was happening and why? Time
stretched on and his fear grew. Finally his arms and legs responded and he sat up,
finding himself alone in the room and shaken by this frightening visitation. He found it
difficult to fall back to sleep and wondered what had happened. Had he somehow been
violated? Off and on during the next day he shuddered as he thought back on the
unearthly presence he had encountered in his bed room.

Source:

Jason's experience, surprisingly, is not that uncommon and is certainly not the most
dramatic report of what is sometimes referred to as an incubus attack. In this case it
may be more appropriate to call it a succubus attack as that is the term used to denote
the demonic female presence. This kind of experience is commonly reported around the
world but with differing mythological explanations. For example, in Japan they have
been referred to as kanashibari, in China as ghost oppression, and in England and
America as the Old Hag. Frightening and overwhelmingly realistic, these experiences
are another example of a parasomnia, specifically, sleep paralysis. They can be
hypnopompic (occurring while awakening) or hypnagogic (occurring while falling asleep)
and are associated with frightening imagery or hallucinations.

The idea of the incubus attack is based in the medieval lore of the nocturnal demonic
visitation. In one version of this lore, the demon is able to take on both male and female
human shape and potentially impregnate a woman, causing her to give birth to a
demonic child. The demon would initially take on the form of a female, known as a
succubus, which would mate with an unsuspecting male victim. Capturing his "seed" the
demon could then take on the male form, known as the incubus. The incubus would
then mate with a female victim who could be impregnated with "demon seed." This
frightening explanation for these nocturnal experiences is still embraced by some today,
and many people who have had this experience find the demonic explanation
convincing, at least initially, because the experience is so intense and apparently real.

Source:

Other explanations have, of course, been offered. For example, an embarrassing

nocturnal emission might have resulted from an uninvited demonic visitor. An
unexplained pregnancy may have been explained as the result of a visit by an incubus.

The scientific explanation for the incubus attack is that the person experiences a state
dissociation in which part of the mental apparatus comes to conscious awareness even
as the rest of the brain is in the REM stage of sleep. The body remains paralyzed so as
to prevent acting out the dream. The realization that it is not possible to move
contributes significantly to the unpleasant and frightening quality of this event. In
 addition, a potential sexual aspect to the experience is provided by the physiology of
REM sleep which causes erection in men and lubrication in women. Awakening from a
frightening experience and subconsciously recognizing an erotic bodily feeling lends
itself to seeing a connection between the experience, and the working of dark
and evil forces. The conscious experience is a combination of dream mentation
superimposed on the sensory background of the room in which the person is sleeping.
Long before Hollywood perfected the green screen technique or computer graphics
allowed for the easy integration of the fantastic with the realistic, the brain was able to
seamlessly blend together the inner world of the dream with the outer world of sense
perception during these state dissociations.

It must be emphasized that for the person who has experienced an incubus or succubus
attack, the rational, scientific explanation may lack the powerful emotional force of the
demonic explanation. Even for trained scientists who have had these experiences,
shaking the belief of having been visited by a malignant force is very difficult. An
interesting account of this may found in Ronald Siegel's book, "Fire In the Brain." Many
patients seeking reassurance will agree that the state dissociation explanation makes
good sense but .....

The incubus attack is just one example of what can occur during state dissociations in
sleep. There is also a great deal of sleep related sexual mentation and potentially many
sleep related sexual behaviors. In future posts these interesting and potentially
disturbing experiences will be discussed.

What a Nightmare
Thank goodness it's only a dream.
Posted May 30, 2011


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Joey was a young man I met at the Boston VA who had been deployed to Iraq and
suffered several near misses in explosions that took out at least one other member of
his platoon. Joey was an educated guy, older relative to the age of his comrades and
much more educated than his friends. When he returned from Iraq he slowly began to
develop repetitive nightmares that left him drained and exhausted and on edge during
the day. In the nightmare, he heard nothing but could sense an enormous, ear
shattering blast just behind as well as all kinds of flying glass, and debris. In the debris
he thought there might be pieces of human flesh.

On memorial day we remember vets who have served in foreign wars. Many of those
vets come home from the warzone suffering repetitive nightmares. Sometimes these
repetitive nightmares turn into a full blown post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One
of the core symptoms of PTSD is the presence of distressing nightmares.

Nightmares are one of the most unpleasant aspects of dreaming.  Nightmares are
dreams that are terrifying to the dreamer and sometimes so much so that they awaken
the dreamer. When we awake from a terrifying dream and say to ourselves 'thank god it
was only a dream!'... then we know we have had a nightmare. Two to five percent of the
adult population report nightmares 'often or always' and 8% to 30% of the adult
population have a nightmare at least once a month. About 4% of parents report that
their preschool children have frequent nightmares. Nightmares increase in frequency in
the pre-adolescent and adolescent years -especially for girls. Women on average report
more frequent and more intense nightmares then do men.

Nightmares are also associated with trauma. If you experience some kind
of traumaticevent the chances that you will experience a nightmare soon after the
traumatic increase significantly.In vets exposed to war-related blast injuries or other
forms of trauma PTSD may develop.  Ernest Hartmann has suggested that nightmares
point to an emotional integration function for dreams more generally. Ross and Levin
have suggested a similar affect regulation theory of dreaming and its breakdown with
nightmares.  These theories suggest that when the emotion to be integrated into long
term memory is too intense the integrative function of dreaming can breakdown and
repetitive nightmares are the result.

Nightmares most often occur in REM episodes that occur toward the early morning
hours. This fact suggests that something about the biology of REM facilitates the
nightmare. Interestingly in PTSD nightmares may occur both within a REM episode and
without a REM episode (i.e. as part fo NREM). To me the most likely candidate
neuroanatomical locus for nightmares is the amygdala, that is over-activation of
particular portions of the amygdala. Neuroimaging studies of the dreaming brain have
demonstrated that the amygdala is intensely activated during REM. Independent, non-
sleep-related studies of the amygdala have established it as a processing center
for fear, aggression and other negative emotions. It would not be surprising if over-
activation of the amygdala during REM can create intense fear-responses in the
individual. 

Whatever the physiologic causes of nightmares people have discovered, and scientists
such as Barry Krakow have confirmed that taking a scary image from the nightmare and
then performing exercises that de-sensitize oneself to the image seem to help with the
distress that occurs with nightmares.
 Reference: McNamara, P. (2008). Nightmares: The
science and solution of those frightening visions
during sleep. Westport,         CT: Praeger
Perspectives.

Five Steps to Conquering

Nightmares
New research uncovers the link between daytime emotions and
nighttime terror.
Posted Nov 16, 2013

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Source: Spectral Design/Shutterstock

Having an occasional nightmare can be distressing, but the remnants of the dream tend
to pass quickly after you awaken. By the time the day is over, you may have forgotten
the nightmare entirely. For some people, though, nightmares are a chronic problem.
Tortuous dreams interfere with their quality of sleep, and the feelings that remain after
waking continue for hours or longer.

There is surprisingly little scientific research on nightmares. One obvious problem in

conducting research on nightmares (and in dream research in general) is that people
forget the specifics of their dreams after they awaken. Moreover, all the data is by
definition self-reported, so it’s not possible to know exactly what transpired in the actual
dream itself. 

As part of a larger research project on emotional dysregulation—the ability to control

emotions— Rutgers University psychologist Edward Selby and his Florida State
University collaborators Thomas Joiner, Jr. and Jessica Ribeiro examined the theory
that people with certain personality qualities would be more prone to nightmares.
Specifically, according to previous studies, people with borderline personality
disorder have more nightmares.

Selby and his collaborators believed that this association could be explained by what
they called the Emotional Cascade Model. In this model, negative emotional
experiences during the day can contribute to nightmares made worse by two processes.
First is rumination, or going over things again and again in your mind. Rumination keeps
the pain of those negative experiences fresh.
The second process is catastrophizing, in which you imagine the worst possible
outcome from a negative experience. As you do, the magnitude of the experience
skyrockets beyond its original negative impact. People with borderline personality
disorder may experience more nightmares than others because they engage more
frequently in these two reactions to emotionally upsetting events. Anyone can
experience emotional cascades, but people with borderline personality disorder do so to
a greater extent because they have greater difficulty regulating negative emotions.

In general, the Emotional Cascade Model predicts that nightmares reflect a spillover (or
emotional cascade) of worries from the day that you carry over into your sleep. When
bad things happen to you during the day, you have more trouble falling asleep. You
remain mentally aroused, and these emotions become the basis of your nightmares.
Making matters worse, you may awaken briefly from your sleep, still worried, and
experience a “waking nightmare” in which you are actually awake but think you
are sleeping.

In a 2013 publication in the journal Dreaming, Selby and his team decided to test their

predictions about emotional cascades and borderline personality disorder (BPD) by
comparing the dreams of people who fit the criteria for this diagnosis with a comparison
group who did not. However, they needed to control for the likelihood that those with
BPD might actually engage in more problematic behaviors than those without this
diagnosis. Therefore, they recruited people who self-reported that they frequently
engaged in dysregulated (out of control) behaviors such as binge eating, reckless
driving, impulsiveshopping, self-injury, alcohol and marijuana use, physical fighting and
verbal aggression. Both groups, then, engaged in behaviors that may provoke negative
emotions.

To test the role of rumination and catastrophizing, Selby and his collaborators asked
people in both groups to complete scales testing these tendencies. They measured
rumination with items such as, “I am preoccupied with what I think and feel about what I
have experienced,” and catastrophizing with items such as, “I keep thinking about how
terrible it is what I have experienced.” If their theory about BPD and nightmares was
correct, both of these tendencies should predict frequency of nightmares, but the
relationship should be stronger for those with BPD, who are particularly prone to these
tendencies.

After measuring these personality tendencies, Selby and his coauthors asked the 47
participants in the study—16 of whom had been diagnosed with BPD—to keep daily
records of their negative emotions, rumination tendencies, and nightmares at different
points each day over a two-week period. 

The BPD participants had more nightmares than the non-BPD group and also slept
fewer hours, though their sleep quality was no worse than the comparison group. Those
with the BPD diagnosis who tended to ruminate and also reported more negative
emotions during the day had significantly more nightmares than any of the other groups.

The story doesn’t stop there: The more nightmares people had, the more likely they
were to experience negative emotions the next day and to ruminate about those
emotions. Those with BPD who had nightmares tended to experience more negative
emotions the subsequent day, but not more rumination tendencies.

Whether or not you have BPD, if you’re prone to experiencing negative emotions,
thinking about those emotions, and worrying that things will only get worse, your
emotional state can cascade into your dream life. People with BPD, sleep disorders, or
both should seek professional treatment. However, if you don't have either of these
diagnoses, but still find that your nightmares bother you, there are steps you can follow
to reduce your own emotional cascades: 

1. Put your worries to rest when you put your head down to rest. As much as
possible, try to clear your head of your day’s annoyances and unpleasant events.
Focus on the positive events that happened to you during the day or, if you had
none, try to put a positive spin on what you did experience.

2. Watch for rumination and catastrophizing tendencies. If, in general, you tend

to think about the negative events and feelings in your life and blow them out of
proportion, try to stop yourself when you they arise in your mind. Catch yourself
when you’re envisioning worst-case scenarios or when you’re starting to get down
 on yourself for feeling the way you do.  Reducing your negative emotions while
you’re awake can make it easier for you to engage in Step 1 of putting them on
hold when you’re ready to go to sleep.

3. Examine your tendency to have experiences that are actually

negative. Remember that the study was conducted on people who all said that
they engaged in risky, impulsive, and troublesome behaviors. You will of course
have more negative emotions associated with high-risk behaviors because they do
cause problems. It’s even possible that you engage in these behaviors because of
your negative emotions. If you find less problematic outlets for your feelings you
may cut them off at their source.

4. If you have nightmares, don’t catastrophize them. The nightmares that stick

with you the following day may contain horrendous images. Dreams do not predict
the future. If you worry that the bad things you dreamt about will happen, you will
only increase your negative mood state.  

5. Learn to distinguish an actual from a waking nightmare. Once you realize

that you may actually be awake when you think you were asleep, you can benefit
by understanding that you’re allowing your negative emotions to cascade.
Identifying your negative emotions can be the first step to changing them, whether
you’re fully or only half awake.

Freud proposed that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious,” but the road
doesn't have to lead to emotional distress. By understanding how your daytime feelings
spill over to your nighttime experiences, you can improve your emotional states while
awake and asleep.

Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily updates on psychology, health,

and aging. Feel free to join my Facebook group, "Fulfillment at Any Age," to
discuss today's blog, or to ask further questions about this posting.

Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. 2013 

 What Dreams May Come: Treating
the Nightmares of PTSD
PTSD nightmares can be difficult to treat, but Prazosin may help.
Posted Jul 09, 2014

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David Rijckaert (III) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Source:

A standard part of any psychiatricevaluation involves inquiring about a patient’s sleep.

Hidden in the answers that follow the basic question of, “How are you sleeping?” are the
clues that are needed to diagnose what is ailing the patient seeking help from me.

For those with depression, they typically report early morning awakening (i.e. they wake
3-4 hours earlier than needed) and are not able to return to sleep. Those
with anxiety disorders often complain of not being able to fall asleep (initial insomnia).
They toss and turn for hours, their minds “racing” with anxious thoughts and worries.
For those with mania, they report that they can’t sleep at all, for their energized and
overcharged bodies simply have no need for sleep.

My patients with PTSD often report an amalgamation of all of the above in addition to a

specific complaint — nightmares.

Nightmares — those threatening or scary dreams that leave you crying out in your

sleep, thrashing around in your bed or waking up in a blind panic, soaked in sweat and
with your heart pounding in your throat.
Nightmares — a very common complaint for those living with PTSD.
Some studies report up to 80 percent of those with PTSD experience nightmares that
have them reliving or re-experiencing the traumatic event for months or years after the
actual event took place. 

Nightmares are not only commonly experienced by those living with PTSD, but they
occur frequently too, sometimes several times a week, so their impact on the lives of
those living with PTSD can be profound.

The differences in sleep amongst those with PTSD related nightmares (compared with
those who do not have PTSD) are tangible. They have:

-increased phasic R (REM) sleep activity

-decreased total sleep time

-increased number and duration of nocturnal awakenings

-decreased slow wave sleep (or deep sleep)

-increased periodic leg movements during both REM and NREM sleep

In short, their sleep is less efficient and associated with a higher incidence of other
sleep related breathing disorders.

Treating Nightmares

Clinically, this translates to the sad stories I hear all too often: People turn to alcohol or
illicit drugs to “escape” the nightmares, or their chronically poor sleep quality leads to
other problems such as depression and anxiety. Others start to fear sleep or simply
don’t function that well—they lose jobs, are irritable and short tempered with their loved
ones, feel tired and lack energy. The nightmares and poor quality sleep chips away at
their lives over weeks, months, and years.
As a psychiatrist, there is a certain amount of dread associated with learning that your
patient is experiencing nightmares, for the very simple fact that nightmares related to
PTSD can be very hard to treat.

The first approach is to treat the underlying condition, i.e. the PTSD. I offer the patient
evidence-based psychotherapies and, if necessary, medications that I know work for
PTSD and hope that, with time, the frequency and intensity of the nightmares will start
to decrease as the underlying PTSD is treated.

But often times, despite PTSD treatment, patients still complain of nightmares. What
can I offer them then?

A Psychotherapeutic Option

Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT) is one option:

- IRT is a modified CBT technique that utilizes recalling the nightmare, writing it down,

and changing the theme - i.e. change the storyline to a more positive one

- The patient rehearses the rewritten dream scenario so that they can displace the
unwanted content when the dream recurs (they do this by practicing 10-20 mins per
day)

- In controlled studies, IRT has been shown to inhibit the original nightmare by providing
a cognitive shift that refutes the original premise of the nightmare

Though it is a well tolerated treatment, the issue remains that a patient has to be willing
and able to commit to IRT for it to work. This leaves a need for alternative options for
patients who are unable to commit to this type of treatment.

A Medication for Nightmares

Recently, hope has been offered in research published about the medication Prazosin.
Prazosin is an alpha adrenergic receptor antagonist (traditionally used as an
antihypertensive agent). It acts to reduce the level of activating neurochemicals in
the brain and, via this action, is thought to damp down neurological pathways which are
overstimulated in people with PTSD.

Whilst clinically, psychiatrists have been using Prazosin for the treatment of PTSD-
related nightmares for years, the fact remains that we still need more evidence from
controlled trials to support its efficacy. A small randomized controlled trial of Prazosin for
sleep and PTSD has recently made a much needed contribution to that evidence base.

In a 15 week trial involving 67 active duty soldiers with PTSD, the drug was titrated up
based on the participant nightmare response over 6 weeks. Prazosin was found to be
effective in improving trauma-related nightmares and sleep quality and, in turn,
associated with reduced PTSD symptoms and an improvement in global functioning.

This is encouraging and increases the enthusiasm with which I will recommend this
treatment to my patients with PTSD.

Still, the profound effect nightmares have on the quality of life of those living with PTSD
highlights that more needs to be done to expand the array of options available to
clinicians, like me, to help these patients.

Copyright: Shaili Jain, MD. For more information, please see PLOS Blogs.

Image: David Rijckaert (III) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 Dream
Interpretatio
n
 

 
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Page Contents: Introduction / Freud: The Royal Road / Other

Ideas /The Dream Text / The Clinical Work / Some Helpful Points /Traumatic Nightmares / I
ncubus and Succubus / Other Troubling Dreams

Dreams
REAMS can be baffling and mysterious. Throughout history dreams have been
associated with sacred revelation and prophecy. Moreover, it was a dream that reveal
a scientist the molecular structure of carbon atoms in the benzene ring. [1] All this myst
can leave us wondering what a particular dream means to the dreamer, and we can ar
about what causes dreams in the first place.  

Yet, in spite of modern science, dreams still remain mysterious. Science can offer som
explanation of how dreams are related to brain functioning, but only a psychological
understanding of the unconscious can explain why a dream happens at a particular tim
your life and what it all means psychologically.

Because I make dream interpretation a key part of my psychotherapeutic work, I’ll of

some comments here about this work.
 

Freud:
Sigmund Freud once called dreams the “royal road to . . . the unconscious,” and I thi
  that statement will remain true in psychology forever. Freud’s classic text, The
The Interpretation of Dreams, contains some of his finest work.
 
Royal I won’t even try to summarize Freud’s work here, but I will point out
  Freud believed every dream is a wish fulfillment, and he kept this theo
Road the end, even though he gave up his initial idea that all dreams have an
underlying sexual content.

For Freud, the concept of wish fulfillment didn’t necessarily imply tha
pleasure was sought, because a person could just as well have a wish to
bepunished. Nevertheless, this idea of a “secret” wish being masked by
dream remains central to classical Freudian psychoanalysis.

Other
Of course, there are other ideas about dreams besides Freudian theories.
 
Ideas Some persons believe that dreams have certain fixed meanings. “If you dream about
oranges, it means good health; if you dream about onions, it means hard work,” and s
You can even buy “dictionaries” of dream interpretation.

Then there are modern scientists who claim that dreams are nothing more than image
resulting from random electrical activity in the brain as it “housecleans” itself during
night.

And then there are those such as myself who accept the unconscious importance of dr
and yet see them as more than wish fulfillment; I find dreams to be valuable hints abo
how to improve our lives—and perhaps even keep us from foolish self-destruction.

 
 

The
To use dream material clinically—that is, in psychotherapy—it is important to realiz
  you never use the dream itself. That might sound strange, but think about it. When yo
Dream someone about a dream, it’s impossible to depict the jumble of images that you percei
  while you were sleeping. All you can do is put the dream into words in an imperfect
Text attempt to describe what you experienced. So, in the end, to talk about the dream you
really talk about the text of your perception of the dream.

The text, of course, is language, and, as such, it’s already a form of interpretation of th
raw experience. So does it even matter if the images came to you because of random
electrical activity in the brain or because of that greasy pizza you ate before going to b
Your attempt to make sense of those images, wherever they came from, can still revea
something very important about your current psychological process.

The
The clinical work of dream interpretation, therefore, involves three things.
 
Clinical First, the dream story must be put into language. It’s best if you write down the details
  dream immediately after you wake up from the dream. But sometimes it’s possible to
Work remember the story of a dream—or a dream fragment—even if you don’t write it dow
Really important dreams will stay with you even if you try to forget them.

Second, you have to describe thoroughly and understand your psychological associations
the various dream images. These associations must come from your personal life, not f
“dictionary” of fixed meanings. Essentially, this amounts to asking, “When you think
this particular dream image, what other things come to mind?” Dreaming of Mrs. Sm
from your childhood, for example, doesn’t necessarily “mean” anything, but what you
thought about Mrs. Smith when you were a child—in essence, what her life, behaviors
values suggested to you then—might have something to say about the problems you
struggle with today.

Third, you have to discover the links between all these associations. This process is a bit
 those “connect the dots” puzzles that reveal a hidden picture. Psychologically, you sim
need to understand what this net of associations from the dream is telling you specific
at this precise time of your life, about your current problems and conflicts. Quite ofte
these associations are purely emotional; that is, you can take a particularly graphic dr
image, examine your emotional reactions to it, look back into your past for times when
felt the same emotions, and then ask yourself in what way those situations from the pa
have any bearing on what is happening in your life now.

Some
Here are some helpful points about dream interpretation:
 
Helpful You don’t have to interpret your dreams in order to solve your problems. But just as ther
  the saying that “Death cures cigarette smoking,” you might find that listening to your
Points dreams may help you solve your problems before you run out of time. Similarly, altho
dream analysis does not necessarily have to be a part of psychotherapy, your
psychotherapy will be enhanced if you make the effort to interpret your dreams in the
psychotherapy.

Dreams are always “true”—it’s just that what they mean isn’t always what we think they
mean. Sometimes a dream gives a warning of danger, but if you pay attention to the d
and change your ways the danger won’t necessarily happen. And most often a dream’
meaning will be metaphorical, not literal. For example, a woman may dream that her
husband is having a sexual affair, but it would be a mistake to conclude that her husb
really having an affair. The dream is simply providing the woman graphic evidence th
she somehow feels betrayed by her husband. Once she acknowledges that feeling, she
then start examining her life consciously—and honestly—to find out why she feels bet
and what she needs to do about it.

Dreams often mean the opposite of what they seem to mean. The technical, psychoanaly
explanation for this is complicated, but it has to do with the fact that we often see our
desires as they are reflected (and mirror-reversed) through others. For example, if yo
dream that you’re embarrassed for being in public without clothes, it likely means tha
have an unconscious desire for some hidden aspect of your life to be shown to others i
“naked truth.”

Images of sexuality are rarely, if ever, expressions of “love.” To the body, sexuality is si
an aspect of the biological process of reproduction and therefore has nothing to do wit
what we commonly call love. Therefore, in the unconscious—and in dreams—sexual
images and feelings do not signify a yearning for real love, but instead they signify a
narcissistic need to “reproduce” feelings of being seen or of being noticed, as a way to
compensate for the fear of being abandoned or ignored.

“But I don’t dream,” you might say. Well, that’s not exactly true. Scientific studies hav
shown that everyone ever studied dreams, and so it’s generally accepted
that everyone dreams.

Sleep studies have shown that we go through several cycles of light to very deep
sleep each night. One phase of each cycle is called Rapid Eye Movement (REM)
sleep. Whenever a researcher woke up a sleeper in REM sleep and asked what wa
   happening, the sleeper always said, “I was dreaming.” In fact, even animals
experience REM sleep, so we surmise that they, too, dream—but we cannot
communicate with them to find out anything about the nature of their dreams.
It’s easy to forget your dreams. In order to interpret your dreams you have to rememb
them, so forgetting them is a real problem. In fact, those who chronically forget their
dreams tend to claim that they don’t dream. You will remember your dreams only if y
wake up during, or just at the end of, a dream, but if you don’t wake up, or if you wak
just enough to turn over and fall asleep again, you’re not likely to remember a thing in
morning. To ensure that you remember a dream you can write it down as soon as you
up from it; keep a note pad and a pen by your bed—and tell yourself, before you fall
asleep, that you want to remember your dreams that night.

We have several dreams each night. Because we go through several cycles of REM slee
each night, we have many dreams each night, and at times you may be able to rememb
several of them each night. Sometimes, in the morning, as you review your notes of a
dream from the previous night, you might remember other dreams that happened bef
or after the dream you transcribed.

Don’t worry about being unable to remember a seemingly important dream. If it’s really
important the message will eventually get communicated in other ways or in other dre

Not every psychotherapist is skilled at, let alone trained in, dream interpretation. Freud,
good sense, suggested that, in order to work properly with the unconscious, a
psychotherapist should be well-educated in literature, history, art, music, and religion
besides having specific psychological training. You have a right to ask about your
 psychotherapist’s training and education. If your psychotherapist is interested only in
sit-coms, well, good luck.

All dreams essentially tell us one important thing: “Wake up!” That is, just as you must
up from a dream to remember it, the dream itself is telling you to “wake up” to
the truththat you try to hide from others—and from yourself.

Repetitive dreams indicate that you are continuing to miss the point about the meaning o
dream. If you don’t “wake up” to the unconscious meaning of the dream but instead p
in seeing it through your own wish-fulfillment needs, you will remain stuck in your ow
self-deception. The psychoanalytic concept of repetition can be difficult to understand
web page Death—and the Seduction of Despair on this website provides more explanat
For help with resolving repetitive nightmares, see the explanation of the technique
called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy immediately below.

  

Traumatic
Our modern word nightmare derives from the Middle English nihtmare (from niht, n
  and mare, demon), an evil spirit believed to haunt and suffocate sleeping people. Ther
Nightmares in today’s world, when we speak of a nightmare we mean a frightening dream
accompanied by a sensation of oppression and helplessness.

Moreover, the oppressive aspect of the nihtmare can give a good clue about nightmare
general, for in psychodynamic terms nightmares are graphic depictions of raw, primit
emotions such as aggression and rage that have not been incorporated into the conscio
psyche. Thus we tend to encounter these “ugly” aspects of our unconscious lives as
terrifying dream images in whose presence we feel completely helpless.

Nightmares are quite common in childhood because this is a time of our emotional
development when we all have to come to terms with, well, raw, primitive emotions su
aggression and rage. Once these raw emotions become incorporated into the psyche
through socialization and language, nightmares tend to dissipate naturally. 

Traumatic nightmares, however, can also occur as one of the many symptoms
ofposttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Repetitive, intrusive nightmares following a
trauma often contain symbolic themes that mirror the original trauma and relate to th
to life, threat of abandonment or death, or loss of identity. Although exploration of thes
themes in psychotherapy can promote improved personal adjustment, the nightmares
continue to persist despite any symbolic interpretation. [2]

Therefore, traumatic nightmares need to be treated differently than other dreams. It’s n

enough just to “know” intellectually the psychological reasons why you have these
nightmares. An event is traumatic because it disrupts your previously secure—and ill
—sense of “self.” And so, to heal from a trauma, you must take the initiative to make
conscious changes in your life to accommodate the traumatic shattering of your illusio
about life and identity. 

Systematic desensitization, for example, as part of a multidimensional treatment for P

may be of special help in reducing traumatic reenactment. [3] An even more effective w
“sow the seeds” of new ways of thinking and acting is Imagery Rehearsal Therapy.

 
Imagery Rehearsal Therapy

The raw emotions of repetitive, intrusive nightmares can be “tamed” by a simple, easil
learned technique called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy (IRT). If you have multiple recu
nightmares, select just one for the IRT process and use the process every night until th
nightmare has been resolved; when that nightmare has been resolved, repeat the proc
for other nightmares.

Write out the text of the nightmare. Tell the story, no matter how frightening, in a
1. much detail as you can remember.
 
2. Create a new ending for the nightmare story and write it out. Be careful, however
make the new ending peaceful. Remember that the nightmare is grounded in emo
such as raw anger that have been provoked by a trauma. The point of a new endin
to “tame” the emotions, not merely vent them in violence and revenge.

A woman had been raped. She had a recurring nightmare of being pursued by a d
figure. In the nightmare, she ran and ran, and, each each time the nightmare recu
she always woke up, sweating and gasping for breath, at the same point. So she
decided, as a new ending, to stop running and confront the figure. In a subsequen
dream, when the pursuing figure appeared, she turned to him and said, “Who are
and what do you want?” And here’s where her unconscious surprised her. The m
replied, very politely, “You dropped this, and I have been trying to give it back to
 you.” He handed her a package. She asked what it was. “It’s your faith in human
goodness,” he said. She woke up. And the nightmare never returned.
 
3. Rehearse the new version of the story in your imagination each night just before g
to sleep. Do this as close as possible to your falling asleep without any other activi
between the rehearsal and sleep.
 
4. Perform a relaxation exercise. Do this immediately after the rehearsal, as a way to
asleep peacefully. You may use any technique with which you are familiar. If you
to learn a relaxation technique, try Progressive Muscle Relaxation. Or just use
the Breathing Warm-up from the Autogenics Training if you need to get started as
as possible and don’t have the time to learn something more complex.

Incubus
Have you ever had the experience of waking up during the night because you feel a
  terrifying external presence around you, a mysterious eerie presence that feels like it i
and smothering and devouring you, and all the while you can’t move or protect yourself
  because your body feels completely paralyzed?
Succubus
One component of a night terror such as this is called sleep paralysis; modern science
attributes the physiological mechanism of such paralysis to a natural protective functi
the brain which prevents the body from thrashing around during periods of sleep, cal
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when dreams occur.

Nevertheless, a scientific explanation of sleep paralysis does not offer any insight into
symbolic meaning of such an experience. Why would a person “wake up” just at a mo
of paralysis? Why should the experience feel smothering and terrifying? And sometim
the whole paralysis experience is all a dream in itself—so why would a
person dream of waking up to a feeling of paralysis, helplessness, and terror?

In medieval folklore this experience was attributed to an incubus, a demon said to lie
and seduce sleeping women. A demon causing a corresponding experience for a man w
called a succubus.
Now, a modern psychological explanation of these experiences begins with a close look
two meaningful words: smothering and seduction.

Let’s begin this examination by considering how every human infant, being completel
helpless at birth, needs to be nursed and protected in order to survive. The infant need
be enveloped, so to speak, in a mother’s love—and this whole experience can have the
quality of an idyllic, intoxicating bliss. Nevertheless, every infant is destined to become
independently functioning adult, and to achieve this independence the growing child m
beseparated from the mother. So right here we have a fundamental tension: the bliss o
envelopment in another, if it isn’t eventually stopped, can actually stifle and smother t
attainment of independence.

As adults—especially if we have been forced into independence rather than initiated i

through proper parental guidance—we can feel a nostalgic yearning for the bliss of an
infantile envelopment in a mother. And so we will create fantasies of being “enveloped
another person. But because contemporary culture invariably confuses sexuality with
these fantasies of envelopment become fantasies of sexual seduction.

Now here’s where things get psychologically complicated. Just as infantile envelopmen
a mother can also be stifling and smothering, adult seduction has its own dark side of
smothering. Sexual seduction, at its psychological core, really is a matter of manipulat
by the desire of another. And when seen in its raw reality, manipulation is far from be
blissful. In fact, it’s downright terrifying.

Imagine a place where there is no justice and no truth, only unbridled hedonism, a
preoccupation with personal satisfaction even to the point of causing pain to other
Imagine being vulnerable to being seized and used by any other being who stumbl
upon you. Scream all you want and no one will hear you because everyone else is
   screaming too. So you can’t really scream at all.
 
Hmmm . . . Mardi Gras in Rio? Well, not exactly. This horrifying place is the plac
of the demonic.
Therefore, when you unconsciously direct your life desire to being seduced, you enter
place of the demonic. At first it might seem exciting and intoxicating. But sooner or la
before you’re totally lost, your unconscious might wake you up to the sheer terror of t
paralyzing danger in which you have placed yourself.

So, how do you fight off the demonic? You change your attitude. Turn away from the
intoxicating abandonment to self-serving illusions of ecstasy and then learn how to sac
yourself in service to others through real love. It’s that simple.
 

Other
Sometimes people complain of having disturbing dreams with unpleasant images, des
  leading a seemingly peaceful waking life. And so they wonder, “What is my unconscio
Troubling mind trying to tell me?”
 
Dreams There can be several reasons for such dreams.
 
First, the dreams could be unconscious advice. Maybe in some way you are betraying
yourself, forgetting something, or not fulfilling a potential. For example, persons on th
edge of a midlife career change may have dreams about being in school and searching
missing classroom, or they may find themselves in a class about to take a final exam w
realizing that they completely forgot to attend the class all year. Thus the feeling of pa
the dream points to the real feeling of panic in their current life about something bein
neglected or “forgotten.”

Second, the dreams could be an admonition, based in guilt. Imagine, for example, that y
are embezzling the bank for which you work. Then you start having dreams about
burglars breaking into your home. Well, the dreams are simply a depiction of somethi
happening to you that is similar to the hurt or moral injury you are inflicting on some
else. This same dynamic often occurs in children’s nightmares: in waking life, children
often experience angry feelings toward their parents and yet lack the cognitive capaci
express these feelings openly; so, in unconscious guilt, the anger becomes turned again
themselves as threatening nightmare images.

Third, the dreams could be hints of a repressed trauma. As I say above, nightmares ofte
accompany the emotional pain of a traumatic event experienced in adulthood. But if a
trauma in childhood is repressed, dreams reflecting the emotional intensity of the trau
can persist throughout life—as a repetition compulsion—until the trauma is eventuall
brought to conscious awareness and healed.

Fourth, the dreams could be psychic premonitions. This is a rare phenomenon, but it do

happen to some persons. In fact, it happened to me at least once. Nevertheless, my adv
here is to ignore these dreams. After all, if they don’t provide sufficient details
about when, where, and to whom the event will happen, so that the event might be
prevented, then what good are such premonitions?
 In the dream, which I still remembered vividly when I woke up, I saw several
persons in a small river canyon playing in the shallow water and even sliding over
small waterfall. Suddenly a huge surge of water came down the river and carried
everyone away with it. The next morning, at breakfast, a headline in a newspaper
   caught my attention. As I read the article, I must have stopped breathing. Several
adventurers, on an excursion in the Swiss mountains to “body surf” in river rapid
and waterfalls the previous day, had been killed when a sudden storm surge rushe
down a canyon and swept them away.

Psychology from
The the Heart
The Spiritual
 
Depth of Clinical
Book Psychology
 
A collection of texts
from the writings of
Raymond Lloyd
Richmond, Ph.D.

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Notes:

1. The scientist was Friedrich August Kekulé. The particular arrangement of the carbon atoms in the benzene
ring, consisting of a ring of six atoms of carbon, had been a mystery until 1865 when Kekulé had a dream in
which he saw a chain of carbon atoms rotating in a circle, like a snake chasing its own tail.
 
2. Orner, R. J., & Stolz, P. (2002). Making sense of repetition phenomena by integrating psychotraumatology
and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 15(6), 465–471.
 
3. Shalev, A. Y., Bonne, O., & Eth, S. (1996). Treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder: A
review. Psychosomatic Medicine, 58, 165–182.

 
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Consumer Rights and Office Policies
Death—and the Seduction of Despair
Identity and Loneliness
Psychology and Psychiatry—and Psychoanalysis
Questions and Answers about Psychotherapy
Reasons to Consult a Psychologist
Types of Psychological Treatment
The Unconscious
 
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