Dreams

In this paper I suggest that in the early stages of many analyses some patients’ dreams are predictive of the future course of the analysis. These dreams contain a condensed narrative about the transference relationship and encapsulate a narrative that will unfold as the analysis progresses. Although the analyst may be aware of the crucial relevance of such dreams at the time they occur, it is only retrospectively, at a later stage in the analysis, that these dreams may be more fully comprehended. Moreover, there is a specific experience that is conveyed in the account of these dreams, that is felt by the analyst in the countertransference but only slowly understood as the analysis unfolds. The analytic task is to change the course anticipated by these dreams, and introduce a difference in the “prediction” these dreams make.

Until the 1960's evidence for psi-dreaming (including precognitive dreams, telepathic dreams, clairvoyant dreams and mutual dreams) consisted mostly of anecdotal reports. However, at that point researchers at Maimonides Dream Laboratory (1) took the next step, and in a series of controlled scientific studies demonstrated that subjects could repeatedly tune into randomly selected external targets in their dreams. A meta-analysis of post-Maimonides studies of psi-dreaming by other researchers confirmed this effect (2).

In a related area, research since the 1970’s in remote viewing has demonstrated that human beings in general have the ability to tune into designated targets outside of the range of their physical senses. In 1995 the CIA hired Dr. Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Davis, to evaluate a series of remote viewing experiments done at the Stanford Research Institute. She concluded: "Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted." (3) And it seems generally agreed that spontaneous dream-state psi occurs much more easily and often than waking-state psi.

For theories on the nature of dreaming, the validation of dream-psi seems the equivalent of the Michelson-Morley experiment in physics, with the exception that few have realized the profound implications. For example, psi-dreaming has made strictly subjective, solipsistic theories of dreaming outdated and untenable. We need to change how we think about dreams, and to understand that dreaming involves a kind of perception.

Primo vero modello letterario di Pirandello, Luigi Capuana, verista atipico incline al richiamo dell’occulto, contribuì a indirizzare ideologicamente l’agrigentino a fine ‘800 sulla via dell’irrazionale, sollecitando in lui un concreto interesse per le dottrine teosofiche e spiritiche. Fine di questo saggio è mostrare come l’influenza operata dallo scrittore di Mineo su Pirandello possa declinarsi anche su matrici oniriche, attraverso una indagine di analogie e nessi che intercorrono tra "Sogni… non sogni!" (1905) del primo e "Visita" (1935) del secondo. È infatti il suggestivo tema della «realtà del sogno» – di probabile ascendenza teosofica e frequente nell’ultima produzione pirandelliana – a raccordare i due lavori, prospettando un inaspettato e rinnovato rapporto tra i due scrittori per cui il mondo reale è intimamente connaturato a quello “di là”: "Visita" rappresenta inoltre un primo e pionieristico approccio di un processo estetico di conversione irrazionalistica del momento artistico che Pirandello avrebbe poi più ampiamente operato in Effetti d’un sogno interrotto e nei "Giganti della montagna", inaugurando una breve nuova stagione che solo la morte avrebbe interrotto.

Il saggio intende approfondire l’influenza di Luigi Capuana, verista aperto alle fascinazioni dell’occulto, su "Effetti d’un sogno interrotto" (1936), l’ultima novella di Pirandello, in cui i sogni diventano realtà, il fantastico è consuetudine e i fantasmi prendono vita. In un clima sospeso tra sonno e veglia, nell’intreccio di Eros e Thanatos, in questo racconto – in cui è pure rinvenibile l’ascendenza di Théophile Gautier – si dischiude in forme peculiari l’anelito pirandelliano a declinare irrazionalisticamente l’atto creativo secondo i dettami capuaniani in Spiritismo? (1884) prima e, velatamente, ne L’allucinato (1897) poi: un intento egualmente centrale ne I giganti della montagna, in cui le antiche influenze della teosofia e dello spiritismo, ereditate anticamente dal Capuana e mediate dall’ausilio delle nuove tecniche cinematografiche, affiorano ancora per un’ultima volta.

Lucid dreaming is a part of our nights, people can be part of lucid dreaming consciously or unconsciously, it is in our hands. There are two sides of statements about lucid dreaming: it is safe or not. People who can do lucid dreaming, they want to know is it safe, does it have mental or physical damage on human body.

In our waking lives, we usually assume that other people experience the world pretty much the way we do, even though under normal circumstances we rarely - if ever - check to see if this actually seems the case. But do we really? Studies on the reports of people who witness the same event, routinely show wide discrepancies with respect to both minor-and major details. And if this proves the case for people in physical reality, what might one expect to happen in dreams? Do the Dream Entities (DEs) that we encounter in dreams experience the same dreamscapes that we do? Of course, many western psychologists still believe that dreamscapes, and the DEs that dreamers encounter in them, derive entirely from the dreamer's mind, a view which makes the issue of consensus in this context nonsensical. Because of this underlying assumption, even today dreamworkers typically describe the entities that appear in their dreams as "characters," which conveys the impression that DEs not only lack any sort of independent consciousness, but that they seem akin to fictional characters appearing in a book. However, the validation of psi-dreaming (1,2) has made strictly subjective, solipsistic theories of dreaming outdated and untenable. Dreaming can clearly involve a kind of perception. (3) And evidential accounts of mutual dreaming, where two or more people encounter one another in dreams, confirmed later through consensually matching details, demonstrates that dreaming can have an intersubjective component as well. (4-6)

This  article  takes  a  semiotic  and  structuralist  approach  to  understanding  the  characteristic nightmare package of imagery, or image-constellation, which appears also in charms, curses and lullabies to do with disturbed sleep. Elements of the nightmare package – its mythos – is related to a spectrum of charms and related  belief-narratives.  Charms  against  the  nightmare  are  investigated,  as are sleep charms as representative of the nightmare narrative of threat coming close  to  fruition.  Detail  is  provided  on  spiritual  beings  believed  to  attack  the  sleeper, as well as on charms as methods to ward off such attacks. Psychological explanations are considered, such as the nightmare antagonist being a disguised avatar of the self.

Posttraumatic nightmares are a hallmark of PTSD and distinct from general nightmares as they are often repetitive and faithful representations of the traumatic event. This paper presents data from a pilot study that examined the use of Imagery Rehearsal in treating combat-related nightmares of 12 Vietnam veterans with PTSD. Three treatment groups, comprising 4 veterans in each, completed standardised treatment across 6 sessions. Treatment effects were investigated using nightmare diaries and established instruments, including the IES-R, BDI, BAI, and SCL-90-R. The data demonstrate significant reductions in nightmares targeted, and improvements in PTSD and comorbid symptomatology. The paper recommends that, on the basis of the promising preliminary data, a randomised control trial be established to assess imagery ability and attidude toward nightmares.

During lucid dreaming, a subject willed movements of his fingers, toes and feet, remembered tasks, and counted sensory stimuli. Dreamed speech was related to respiration. EMG activity corresponding to dreamed actions was greater in flexor than in extensor limb muscles and was never present in axial muscles.

Abstract 1. A satisfactory explanation of nightmares remains elusive. Theorists since Freud have speculated on mechanisms that produce nightmares, but no single, widely accepted explanation has emerged (see Nielsen & Levin, 2007b; Levin & Nielsen, 2007). This continuing uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that nightmares, like dreams more generally, are expressions of human emotional memory--which itself is a complex and intransigent phenomenon. The inner workings of emotional memory have yet to be ...

The study deals with the description of the dreams of a Reformed pastor who worked at the beginning of the 17 th century. In the episcopal library of Székesfehé-rvár can be found one issue from the 1590 edition of Andreas Hondroff's work with the title Theatrum Historicum... We know a few possessors of this book: An-drás Keczeli dominie in Tövis, Gábor Csernátoni pastor in Marosillye then in Al-pestes and István Telegdi T. pastor also in Alpestes. On the book Gábor Csernátoni wrote the birth date of his children and István Telegdi wrote down ten of his dreams. The description of these dreams contains numerous cultural aspects and details about the mentality of that period – in three dreams figures Gábor Bethlen prince of Transylvania and in one the widow of the Moldavian prince, Marcu Cercel.

To (1) clarify the epidemiology of bad dreams in children and investigate risk and protective factors related to (2) the child's sleep, (3) parental sleep-enabling practices, and (4) the child's temperament. Longitudinal with 6 time points from 5 months to 6 years. Subjects' homes. Representative sample of 987 children in the Province of Quebec. None. Longitudinal logistic regression analysis models with primary endpoints of presence or absence of parent-rated bad dreams at 29 months, 41 months, 50 months, 5 years, and 6 years and predictor variables of demographic characteristics, parent ratings of child's sleep characteristics, parental sleep-enabling practices (e.g., cosleeping), and child's psychological characteristics at 5 and 17 months (anxiousness, temperament). Mothers' ratings indicated lower than expected prevalence of frequent bad dreams (1.3% to 3.9%). Demographic correlates of bad dreams were high family income, absence of siblings at 29 months,...

Polygraphic recordings were collected for 11 normal subjects during sleep and wakefulness in order to investigate characteristics of the rapid eye movement (REM) associated potentials. EEGs were averaged using 5 different triggering points: (1) saccade onset under the normal ambient illumination, (2) saccade onset in the total darkness, (3) onset of REMs during REM sleep, (4) flash during REM sleep, and (5) flash during stage 2 sleep. In the central area, positive potentials appeared with waking saccades under the normal ambient illumination (P240L) and REMs (P185R). The latency of P185R associated with REMs was significantly shorter than that of P240L associated with waking saccades. These findings suggest that P185R is evoked by PGO waves occurring just before the REM. A small positive potential appeared in the occipital area with waking saccade under the normal ambient illumination (P260L) and REMs in the total darkness (P250R). Conspicuous absence of these waves for waking sacca...

‘Consciousness’ is a superordinate term for a heterogeneous array of mental state types. The types share the property of ‘being experienced’ or ‘being experiences’—‘of there being something that it is like for the subject to be in one of these states.’ I propose that we can only build a theory of consciousness by deploying ‘the natural method’ of coordinating all relevant informational resources at once, especially phenomenology, cognitive science, neuroscience and evolutionary biology. I'll provide two examples of the natural method in action in mental domains where an adaptationist evolutionary account seems plausible: (i) visual awareness and (ii) conscious event memory. Then I will discuss a case, (iii), dreaming, where I think no adaptationist evolutionary account exists. Beyond whatever interest the particular cases have, the examination will show why I think that a theory of mind, and the role conscious mentation plays in it, will need to be built domain-by-domain with no a priori expectation that there will be a unified account of the causal role or evolutionary history of different domains and competences.

In the Latvian literature the motifs of dream and night are without doubt the most popular, exposed and expanded. "Wannem Ymanta" (1802) by Garlieb Merkel (1769–1850) is the first literary work in which the meaning of these words is far more wide than the simple definitional meaning and thanks to what they became national symbols and has contributed to the development of Latvian literature. In Merkel's book one can find a section, which definitely doesn't fit into the whole story. This is a description of the terrifying prophetic vision (it seems that it has been added into an already completed book just before publication, shortly after Alexander I came to the throne on 24 March 1801) dreamed by the main character named Ymanta at night, after which the fate of the Latvian nation is destined to be fulfilled. Before the eyes of the sleeping Ymanta pictures illustrating the fate of Latvians – from the thirteenth century to 1801, one after another, are moving and, like in Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady. Part III, resonating as " the huge cry for a miracle " or " resurrection of the nation " (Wientraub 1982: 203). The aim of this paper is to present this extraordinary Preromanticism dreamed vision, that in the darkness of the night reveals the Past and forecast the Future of Latvians.

In the article  historical experience of the use of sleeps, and also substantive theo¬re¬tical provisions of modern  art-therapy, is exposed  in therapeutic work with dreams.
В статье  раскрыто исторический опыт использования снов, а также основные теоретические положения современной арт-терапии в терапевтической работе со сновидениями.

Do dreams take place in history? Or are they phenomena that take place outside history, on the margins of historical sense and truth? This paper has to do with dreams that take place in the space of the uncanny, where the familiar becomes menacing (according to Freud’s definition) and  from out of which memories of death and violence haunt the present. These dreams constitute a singular history, a spectral history or hauntology, whose logic does not obey the chronological development of historical time but the present’s indebtedness to justice and the remembrance of the dead. I develop this idea from fieldwork in Bojayá, Chocó, in 2016 and 2017, with Grupo de Cantadoras de Pogue [Group of female singers of Pogue], and the testimonies of Cira Pino, an alabadora to whom the art of singing was taught by the spirits who visit her in dreams. Alabaos are funerary songs that guide the deceased to the land of their ancestors. After the massacre of Bojayá, perpetrated by the FARC guerrillas in the town of Bellavista in May 2, 2002, alabaos have become songs of condemnation and resistance. This opens an unprecedented memory-work in Afro Colombian communities in Chocó through which they return to the place of the ancestors to find it transformed into an ominous space, inhabited not only by tradition and their ancestors, but also by the broken souls and bodies of those that have died untimely. I conclude by exploring the ethical dimension of this spectral history and its relationship to justice.

This research investigates the urban sphere beyond its physical condition and studies it as a transcendent phenomenological field that engages memory, imagination, and dream. By using the perception of Benjaminian flâneur as a phenomenological method to investigate the subconscious layers of New York City's urbanscapes, this research argues that the embodied experience of the flâneur transcends the physical urban space into a surrealist dream world. This contestation between built and dreamt asks us to rethink urban space as a sphere of precarious emergence where experiences reform from memory, poetically perceived images surface from imagination, and embodied consciousness attuned to public spheres arises from dream. The research conducts its theoretical inquiry of urban contestations through a surrealist framework that assesses the perception of the flâneur from a phenomenological perspective and focuses on the relationship between the High Line and New York City to investigate a particular urbanscape of contestations that challenges the boundaries between real and surreal, dream and un-dream, past and present, emergence and nostalgia. It further argues that the phenomenological experience of the flâneur evokes memory, imagination, and dream to transform the physicality of urban space into an atmospheric domain of subjective consciousness. In the case of High Line, this domain finds its home in the latent surrealist world that contests the reality of the built world by instilling subjective architectural uncanniness. For the flâneur, the High Line becomes a place of departure that traces past experiences back to memory, a site of voyeurism that channels imagination, and a threshold between dream and reality.

Building on C. G. Jung's early understanding of dance as a form of active imagination, Dreamdancing (Stromsted 1984) brings together the inner world of body sensation, feelings, dreams and images; moving through dreams can help us experience the body/psyche connection. Just as the sensing body provides immediate access to all of life's experiences, our dreams, in turn, reflect the vitality of the body and the condition of our psychic, spiritual life. Analysis involves attuning to these messages, in the other, and within ourselves, hearing the soul's call and working with obstacles to its fulfilment. Elements from this practice may enhance your clinical practice by providing an increased sense of comfort with and appreciation for your own bodily wisdom and feeling responses. Expanded ways of seeing and enhanced awareness of the somatic foundations of the intersubjective relationship can deepen empathy and effectiveness in working with others, while providing avenues for self care and renewal.

The established view, foremost represented by Patricia Cox­-Miller, is that Against the Gentiles 30–34 is about dreaming and the natural capacity of the human soul to reach out to God. In my detailed analysis of the text I have uncovered that the relevant chapters say little, if anything, about dreaming. Instead, they refer to what contemporary studies in religion call soul­-travel, combined with what cognitive scientists designate as lucid dreaming and extrasensory experiences. In making use of such contemporary lenses and also by considering the matters against the backdrop of desert asceticism, I argue that in Against the Gentiles 30–34 Saint Athanasius alluded to the experience of the saints, not to normal dreaming.

School of Arts & Sciences and School of Philosophy & Theology Research Seminars Semester 1 2018, the University of Notre Dame Australia. 29 May 2018

This forthcoming paper (July 2016) will explore the many psychological “uses” of film by a society – including by psychotherapists.

Wilfred Bion's concept of alpha function - which he sometimes called "Narrative Alpha" (see, for example, his Cogitations) plays an important role in the development of cognitive-emotional imagination.

The paper concludes that, these days, cinema is the closest we have to large group dreaming – where we, as a society, make some vital contact with our unconscious life of mind.