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Dream Content, Dream Recurrence and Well-Being: A Replication with a Younger Sample
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A multivariate comparison was made among 52 recurrent, past-recurrent, and nonrecurrent dreamers aged 18–21 yrs. The participants completed measures of well-being and collected a 14-day sample of their own remembered dreams. Multivariate analysis showed that recurrent dreamers scored low on psychological well-being and reported more negative dream content. As was true in an earlier study, a single psychometric dimension, which the authors call psychological well-being, discriminated between the recurrent dream group and the other two groups over the entire set of well-being and dream content variables. As was true in two previous studies, dream archetypality was negatively correlated with a measure of neuroticism. It is concluded that in both late teenagers and older adults, recurrent dreams occur in times of stress, are accompanied by negative dream content, and are associated with a deficit in psychological well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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... Persons with recurring dreams also scored higher on the Beck Depression Inventory, which supported the hypothesis that recurring dreams can be reflective of an An analysis of a recurring dream experienced for 20 years in the context of the theory of processing emotions D I J o R increase in emotional difficulties and unresolved personal problems. The research of Zadra et al. (1998) also showed that university students with recurring dreams had higher depression scores; at the same time, they also scored higher in neuroticism, anxiety, somatic symptomatology, stress resulting from life circumstances; and vice versa, lower scores were detected in personal adjustment and psychological well-being. Lower scores on the scale of psychological well-being in persons with recurring dreams were also confirmed in the research of Brown and Donderi (1986). ...
... Unresolved problems or emotional difficulties connected to recurring dreams were also indicated in the research of Weinstein et al. (2018) which showed that need frustration had a positive correlation with negative dream emotions. At the same time, it has also repeatedly been proven that recurring dreams have a tendency to continue especially during stressful periods in life (Zadra et al., 1998, Duke & Davidson, 2002. An interesting observation is that even research focused on children proved that recurring dreams "are associated with psychological stasis or the presence of continuing emotional concerns" (Gauchat, 2009). ...
This publication presents an analysis of a recurring dream which had been experienced for 20 years. The plat-form for understanding the dream consisted of one of the contemporary theories of dreaming, which defines a dream as a function that serves to consolidate and integrate the emotions of dreamers arising from the state of wakefulness. The analysis of the dreams itself did not show a preference for any school of psychotherapy but resulted from research-based assumptions. It consisted of three steps. In the first step of the analysis the dream emotions were defined in accordance with the theory of continuity as the real emotions of dreamers originating in wakefulness. In the second step the dream contents were analysed on the basis of research assumptions as the personal tendencies of dreamers. The third step consisted of a preliminary interpretation which was verified in the therapeutic conversation itself. The dream analysis indicated the validity of the dream theory, which understands dreams as a function of processing emotions.
... Only about 75% of recurrent dreams are described as being negatively toned, with another 10% containing a mixture of positive and negative emotions . Studies in adults converge in showing that people reporting RD obtain higher scores on measures of depression, anxiety, neuroticism, and stress events, than people without RD (Brown & Donderi, 1986;Duke & Davidson, 2002;Gauchat et al., 2015;Kroth et al., 2002;Robbins & Tanck, 1991-1992Zadra et al., 1997Zadra et al., -1998. Two studies of "general sleep-related experiences," a construct composed of several dream and sleep-related experiences, including recurrent dreams, found that these experiences were significantly more frequent in clinical groups than in control participants and that recurrent dreams correlated significantly with psychological distress (Soffer-Dudek & Shahar, 2009;Soffer-Dudek et al., 2011). ...
... Additional work is also required to clarify the nature and significance of the relation between RD and suicidal ideation. Studies of RD in adult populations (Brown & Donderi, 1986;Soffer-Dudek et al., 2011;Zadra et al., 1997Zadra et al., -1998 have shown that RD are associated with lowered scores on indices of psychological wellbeing and one study (Gauchat et al., 2009) in adolescents found that the presence of RD was linked to reactive aggression (defined as a defensive reaction to a stimulus which is perceived as threatening (Dodge et al., 1997) among boys. The present results add to the clinical importance of these findings and, taken as a whole, point to a need for additional studies of RD and their correlates. ...
Disturbing dreams and recurrent dreams have both been linked to a wide range of psychological difficulties in children. There is growing evidence that the experience of frequent disturbing dreams is associated with suicidal ideation in adults, but studies in young adolescents have been limited and the results inconsistent. In addition, the possible relationship between suicidal ideation and recurrent dreams has yet to be studied. We thus investigated the relation between disturbing dreams, recurrent dreams, and suicidal ideation in a sample of young adolescents. Self-report measures of disturbing dream frequency, recurrent dream frequency, and suicidal ideation were collected at the age of 12 years and again at the age of 13 years from 170 children from a prospective population-based birth cohort. Although the rate of disturbing dreams and recurrent dreams dropped between ages of 12 and 13, the rate of self-reported suicidal ideation increased between the ages of 12 and 13 years. Analyses taking sex and age into account revealed that young adolescents who reported having had suicidal thoughts over the past year had significantly greater frequencies of disturbing dreams and of recurrent dreams than adolescents who had not thought about suicide. These findings highlight the potential clinical value of assessing disturbing and recurrent dreams as part of the screening process for suicidal ideation in young adolescents.
... Fitting into the framework of the continuity hypothesis (Schredl, 2003), the processing of affective states that arise in the dreamer's waking life are thought to continue into sleep (Kramer, 2007). The occurrence of recurrent dreams has also been found to correlate with lower levels of psychological wellbeing (Zadra, 1996), a significantly higher number of problems in daily life (Robbins & Houshi, 1983), and higher levels of neuroticism and anxiety (Brown & Donderi, 1986;Cartwright et al., 1984;Zadra et al., 1997). As negatively toned recurrent dreams overlap with nightmares, for example, being chased, falling, death of the dreamer (Gauchat et al., 2015), the findings that recurrent dream frequency is correlated with stress, neuroticsm and lower levels of well-being fits in with current models of nightmare etiology: for example, the model proposed by Levin and Nielsen (2007) emphasizing an interplay between affect load (situational) and affect distress (dispositional) in nightmare etiology. ...
... It would be very interesting to study the bidirectional relationship across time between recurrent dreams and waking-life well-being (Zadra et al., 1997(Zadra et al., , 2009 and the extent to which nightmare treatment strategies such as imagery rehearsal therapy (Krakow & Zadra, 2006) are also effective in reducing negative recurrent dreams and their negative effects on well-being. ...
The majority of adults (50% to 75%) report that they have had at least once recurring dreams in their lives; most of these recurrent dreams, for example, being chased, are negatively toned. However, systematic research regarding the content of these dreams is relatively scarce. Within the present online survey, 676 participants (545 women, 131 men) with mean age of 27.26 ± 9.12 years reported a recurrent dream. About two thirds of the dream reports were negatively toned, with the most frequent topics being “failure or helplessness” and “being chased.” Persons with high neuroticism scores were more likely to report a negatively toned recurrent dream. About a quarter of the dreams were positively toned, for example, “romantic and sexual interactions,” “experiencing something pleasant,” or “positive social interactions.” Overall, recurrent dreams seem to reflect waking life, that is, negative waking-life experiences are reflected in negatively toned recurrent dreams. It would be very interesting to study whether strategies such as imagery rehearsal therapy that aim to change dream content are reducing negative recurrent dreams and their negative effects on well-being.
... In fact, the dream sleep stage (i.e., REM sleep), has been suggested as a model for schizophrenia (Gottesmann, 2006), and there is some evidence that psychosis may be conceptualized as sleeping mentation entering the waking state (e.g.,Sponheim et al., 1994). The various nocturnal consciousness characteristics that have been related to stress, negative emotion, or psychopathological symptoms include—but are not limited to—traumatic and non-traumatic nightmares (e.g., van derKolk et al., 1984;Hartmann, 1998;Levin, 1998;Cukrowicz et al., 2006;Pigeon et al., 2012), recurrent dreams (Zadra et al., 1997Zadra et al., –1998Duke and Davidson, 2002), falling dreams (e.g.,Kroth et al., 2002;Schredl, 2007), dream bizarreness (e.g.,Cavallotti et al., 2014), and hypnagogic hallucinations (Ohayon et al., 1996;Ohayon, 2000;Koffel, 2011). Additionally, in recent years a broad trait of unique dream characteristics has been strongly and repeatedly linked with distress. ...
... In fact, the dream sleep stage (i.e., REM sleep), has been suggested as a model for schizophrenia (Gottesmann, 2006), and there is some evidence that psychosis may be conceptualized as sleeping mentation entering the waking state (e.g.,Sponheim et al., 1994). The various nocturnal consciousness characteristics that have been related to stress, negative emotion, or psychopathological symptoms include—but are not limited to—traumatic and non-traumatic nightmares (e.g., van derKolk et al., 1984;Hartmann, 1998;Levin, 1998;Cukrowicz et al., 2006;Pigeon et al., 2012), recurrent dreams (Zadra et al., 1997Zadra et al., –1998Duke and Davidson, 2002), falling dreams (e.g.,Kroth et al., 2002;Schredl, 2007), dream bizarreness (e.g.,Cavallotti et al., 2014), and hypnagogic hallucinations (Ohayon et al., 1996;Ohayon, 2000;Koffel, 2011). Additionally, in recent years a broad trait of unique dream characteristics has been strongly and repeatedly linked with distress. ...
The term “sleep experiences,” coined by Watson (2001), denotes an array of unusual nocturnal consciousness phenomena; for example, nightmares, vivid or recurrent dreams, hypnagogic hallucinations, dreams of falling or flying, confusional arousals, and lucid dreams. Excluding the latter, these experiences reflect a single factor of atypical oneiric cognitions (“general sleep experiences”). The current study is an opinionated mini-review on the associations of this factor—measured with the Iowa sleep experiences survey (ISES, Watson, 2001)—with psychopathological symptoms and stress. Findings support a strong relation between psychological distress and general sleep experiences. It is suggested that that they should be viewed as a sleep disturbance; they seem to represent involuntary intrusions of wakefulness into sleep, resulting in aroused sleep. These intrusions may stem from excessively thin boundaries between consciousness states (e.g., “transliminality”), or, conversely, they may follow an attempt at disconnecting mental elements (e.g., dissociation), which paradoxically results in a “rebound effect.” The extent to which unusual dreaming is experienced as intrusive, rather than controlled, may explain why general sleep experiences are related to psychopathology, whereas lucid dreams are related to psychological resilience. In conclusion, the exploration of the interplay between psychopathology and sleep should be expanded from focusing almost exclusively on quantitative aspects (e.g., sleep efficiency, latency) to including qualitative conscious experiences which may reflect poor sleep quality. Taking into account nocturnal consciousness—including unusual dreaming and permeable sleep-wake boundaries—may unveil rich information on night-time emotional states and broaden our definition of poor sleep quality.
... Studies have repeatedly indicated that there is a significant association between high anxiety and frequency of nightmares in children, adolescents, and the adult population. (Zadra, O'Brien & Donderi, 1998). Studies with individuals with depression have also revealed a higher rate of nightmare frequency when compared to the Non-clinical population (Mume, 2009). ...
Dreams are characterized by cognitive, sensory, and emotional instances that occur during the state of sleep.
They are a universal human experience. The intention of this study is to determine the impact of Dream Variables (Nightmare/
Dream content, Dream Intensity, Dream Tone, Dream Recall, Nightmare Frequency, and Nightmare Distress) on
Individuals with Anxiety and Depressive Tendencies. For this study, the data was collected using Convenient Sampling
and Snowball Sampling (N=120). The assessment of dream variables and anxiety and depressive tendencies was done
using MADRE Dream Questionnaire and DASS-21. The statistical analysis using Pearson r Correlation revealed that
Dream Tone is negatively correlated to Anxiety and Depressive Tendencies, while there is a positive correlation with
Nightmare Frequency and Nightmare Distress. A significant association was not found with Dream Intensity and Dream
Recall. Furthermore, through ANOVA it was revealed that Individuals with Anxiety and Depressive Tendencies experience
Dream Variables much differently than the Non-Clinical Population. They are more likely to experience negatively toned
and intense dreams with more negative dream themes like death and abandonment. Additionally, they are also more
prone to experiencing frequent nightmares as well as experiencing nightmare distress that continues in the waking state
of consciousness.
... Dreamers who evaluated their dream content negatively demonstrated relatively low psychological well-being, whereas those who evaluated their dreams positively exhibited correspondingly increased psychological well-being. However, Gauchat et al. (2009) and Zadra et al. (1998) argue that recurrent dreams can have a negative impact on the dreamer's psychological well-being. In brief, the emotions derived from dreams can impact the dreamer's real life. ...
This study was a survey on the relationship between Taiwanese dream attitudes and workplace well-being. The research tool used structured questionnaires as data collection tools, and the questionnaires were answered by employees in the workplace. The content consists of three parts: the first part was participants’ background (including dream frequency estimation), the second part was the dream experience and attitude scale (Beaulieu-Prévost et al., 2009) and the third part was the workplace well-being scale. A total of 340 samples were recovered, and the research results were as follows: Different background variables (gender, age, education level, and job attributes) have differences in dream feeling attitudes scale; different background variables (age, marital status, and education level) were different in the workplace wellbeing scale. There were differences in workplace well-being, and workplace employees’ attitudes toward dream feelings have a significant positive impact on workplace well-being. Among them, the impact of the seven dimensions of dream feelings and attitudes on workplace well-being was examined, and the overall well-being of the workplace and its four dimensions reached significant predictions. Among the seven dimensions of dream feeling and attitude, “dream meaning” and “dream understanding” have the most significant impact on the overall workplace well-being and its four dimensions, indicating that “dream meaning” has a significant positive effect on the overall workplace well-being and its four dimensions. “Dream understanding” has a significant negative impact on workplace well-being as a whole and its four dimensions. Based on the results, suggestions were provided for future practical work and research.
... It may be speculated that the better dream recall and the longer dream reports of anxiety patients go along with a higher number of recalled details and peculiarities of their dreams; however, this was not explicitly investigated in the present study. Concordantly, previous research had shown that clinical outpatients with anxiety disorders (Desroches & Kaiman, 1964;Gentil & Lader, 1978) as well as nonclinical individuals with higher levels of trait and state anxiety (Brown & Donderi, 1986;Duke & Davidson, 2002;Gentil & Lader, 1978;Yu, 2007;Zadra et al., 1998) were able to recall their dreams better, more precisely and provide longer and more detailed dream reports with a higher amount of specific particularities and details. ...
Characteristics of dreams of clinical outpatients with anxiety disorders still remain a relatively poorly investigated field of psychology. The present study aimed at investigating several dream characteristics of outpatients with anxiety disorders in comparison with dream characteristics of healthy individuals. In the study, 38 adult participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals were investigated. During a period of 21 days, all participants filled in written dream diaries directly after sleep, which contained two scales for positive and negative emotions and one scale for the general intensity of emotions in a dream, two dream questionnaires, the Multidimensional Düsseldorf Dream Inventory and the Mannheim Dream Questionnaire, and two nightmare questionnaires, the Nightmare Behavior Questionnaire and the Nightmare Distress Questionnaire. Results showed that patients with anxiety disorders tended to provide longer dream reports and possessed a higher dream recall frequency, their dreams were distinguished by a more negative emotional tone and a lower dream mood, more intense and vivid emotionality, more aversive dreams, a higher rate of incorporations of waking life into dreams, their waking-life mood was found to be more often influenced by dreams, they had a higher nightmare frequency and more nightmare distress and were more interested in the interpretation of their dreams. Within the group of anxiety patients, nightmare distress did not differ between men and women, as well as any behavioral consequences and effects after nightmares. The results indicate marked differences in the way anxiety patients experience dreams, irrespective of the dream contents.
... In detail, dreams of anxiety patients contained a higher number of characters in total than dreams of healthy people. We may conclude that this is related to the notion that patients with anxiety disorders (Desroches & Kaiman, 1964;Gentil & Lader, 1978) or with higher levels of trait and state anxiety (Brown & Donderi, 1986;Duke & Davidson, 2002;Gentil & Lader, 1978;Yu, 2007;Zadra et al., 1998) tend to recall their dreams better and in a more detailed, precise way and are generally prone to remembering specific details and particularities of their dreams, such as specific characters or figures. Dreams of anxiety patients were distinguished by a higher number of different male human characters. ...
Although anxiety disorders are well investigated, little is known about the dream content of patients suffering from anxiety disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate specific characteristics manifested in dreams of patients with clinical anxiety disorders and to compare them with dreams of healthy persons. The sample consisted of 38 participants with anxiety disorders and a matched healthy control group of 38 individuals. As soon as they woke up in the morning, each participant filled in written dream diaries for 21 days and thus provided written dream logs. Dream reports of the participants were analyzed according to the Hall and Van de Castle (1966) system of content analysis of dreams. The results of our study showed that the presence of an anxiety disorder resulted in significant differences in dream contents, compared to the dreams of healthy individuals. Dreams of anxiety patients contained more characters, higher numbers of different activities, social and aggressive interactions, lower numbers of friendly interactions, higher frequencies of failures, misfortunes and negative emotions, and a lower prevalence of successes, good fortune and positive emotions. In addition, they had higher numbers of locations and settings, had more negative evaluations and assessments, and were characterized by a more intense and wider range of different modifiers. The results thus indicate a clear difference in the content and structure of dreams in anxiety patients compared to healthy persons, although anxiety themes are not always prevalent in their dreams.
... While the finding does not provide evidence for differential susceptibility, it is known that patterns of negative or positive dream imagery change over time in response to waking stress. For instance, periods of high stress are associated with more nightmares, and resolution of recurrent nightmares is associated with greater well-being (Zadra et al., 1998). Thus a further test of differential susceptibility would require following patterns of dream imagery over time to see if nightmare-prone individuals might also experience intensified positive imagery during lowstress periods. ...
Nightmares are intensely negative dreams that awaken the dreamer. Frequent nightmares are thought to reflect an executive deficit in regulating arousal. Within a diathesis-stress framework, this arousal is specific to negative contexts, though a differential susceptibility framework predicts elevated arousal in response to both negative and positive contexts. The current study tested these predictions by assessing subjective arousal and changes in frontal oxyhemoglobin (oxyHB) concentrations during negative and positive picture-viewing in nightmare sufferers (NM) and control subjects (CTL). 27 NM and 27 CTL subjects aged 18–35 rated subjective arousal on a 1–9 scale following sequences of negative, neutral and positive images; changes in oxyHB were measured by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) using a 2 × 4 template on the frontal pole. Participants also completed the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, a trait marker for differential susceptibility; and completed a dream diary reporting negative and positive dream emotionality. The NM group had higher trait sensitivity, yet higher ratings of negative but not positive emotion in diary dreams. NM compared to CTL subjects reported higher subjective arousal in response to picture-viewing regardless of valence. Dysphoric dream distress, measured prospectively, was negatively associated with frontal activation when viewing negative pictures. Results suggest NM sufferers are highly sensitive to images regardless of valence according to subjective measures, and that there is a neural basis to level of trait and prospective nightmare distress. Future longitudinal or intervention studies should further explore positive emotion sensitivity and imagery in NM sufferers.
Conducted sleep studies of 49 Ss going through divorce, 23 women and 26 men, at the time of the initial break-up and 1 yr later. 31 of these were diagnosed as depressed on a combined criterion of meeting the Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) and a Beck Depression score above 14, and 18 met neither criterion. The depressed and nondepressed Ss did not differ in Dream-like Fantasy, but did in Affect Strength and type. Depressed Ss who incorporated the ex-spouse into their dreams at the time of the break-up were significantly less depressed and significantly better adjusted to their new life at the follow-up point than Ss who did not. These dreams were rated as having stronger affect. Persons who are depressed during a stressful time in their lives, who dream with strong feelings, and who incorporate the stressor directly into their dreams appear to "work through" their depression more successfully than those who do not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Dreaming is not merely a reactive phenomenon, reactive to instinctual pressure, inner or outer stimuli, a traumatic past or a disturbing present. Dreaming is an active, creative process.
Dreaming is not an irrational, regressive, libidinous phenomenon, but a dynamic biological function of the human organism. It reflects the striving for self-realization whether it is fully expressed or blocked by anxiety-charged neurotic needs.
Dreaming is characterized by a widened scope of perception, particularly of self-awareness.
Dreaming occurs in a state of lessened self-alienation and can become a “door to the larger self”.
Symbol formation in dreams is not a reductive process, characterized by perceptive insufficiency, regression and censorship. It is a creative act in which the dreamer's strivings, conflicts and attempts at solution are crystallized. The past enters the dream as a dynamic symbol of the present.
Dreaming is the latent phase of creative insight and self-realization. It is man's encounter with himself, his life (past, present and future) and his world.
The dream becomes a creative force in therapy if it is permitted to speak for itself, if the therapist does not become a killer of the dream by reducing it to preconceived stereotypes, and if the patient learns to “own” his dream.
91 undergraduates described recurrent dreams experienced in childhood and recurrent dreams of recent years. Content analysis indicated that the dreams reported from childhood were more likely to be threatening. The dreams from childhood more often included a threatening agent which pursued or menaced the dreamer or other characters in the dream. The threatening agents were most frequently folkloric or fictional characters such as monsters or witches. Such folkloric characters were absent in the sample of recent recurring dreams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents data relevant to the emotional information processing function of dreams from a study of the dreams of 19 depressed and 10 nondepressed women undergoing a stressful life event (divorce). Results show both structural and content differences in the dreams of women who were experiencing depression from those who were not. The dreams of both these groups contrasted with those of a comparison group of 9 married controls living stable lives. Dream sequences show problem-solving progress when waking dysphoric affect was moderate and poor quality dream work when affect levels were too high. Two case illustrations are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
suggest that certain features of dream content might be a possible clue to at least one function of dreams / [argues] that the intensity of a preoccupation can be inferred from the frequency with which a particular dream character or dream activity appears / look at the function of dreams by constructing a continuum that I call the repetition dimension / it runs from repeated dreams to repeated themes and elements in dreams
examine what we know about traumatic dreams, recurrent dreams, repeated themes, and frequent dream elements / argue . . . that dreams are an attempt at resolving emotional preoccupations (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)