Tag: International Association for the Study of Dreams

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Bizarreness, Nightmares, and Play

The bizarre contents of dreaming can easily seem like the products of mental deficiency. “Children of an idle brain” is what Mercutio calls them in Romeo & Juliet (I.iv.102). Many scientists today essentially agree with Mercutio that the weird absurdities of dreams are evidence of diminished cognitive functioning during sleep.

But what if the “bizarreness” of dreaming is a sign of health and not disorder? What if, in some conditions at least, the increasing weirdness and unpredictability of dream content heralds genuine healing from serious psychological distress?

At the recent annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, Robert Hoss and Alwin Wagener analyzed a 45-year long series of PTSD nightmares from an American veteran of the Vietnam War. They found that over time, as the veteran healed from his psychological wounds, his nightmares included fewer direct or literal references to wartime violence and more references to other kinds of content, with a rising frequency of metaphorical and symbolic content. In other words, his nightmares gradually became dreamier. Instead of unrelenting graphic repetitions of the traumatizing event, he now experienced dreams involving new characters, settings, scenarios, and emotions.

This fits well with the findings of Harry Wilmer and others that long-term recovery from PTSD corresponds with changes in the frequency and contents of trauma-related nightmares. Wilmer observed that, “the emergence of an ordinary nightmare after prolonged recurrent reliving of the exact trauma in dreams is a healing process… It is the psyche’s attempt at healing.” (1996, 89)

It remains unclear which comes first, the shifts in dreaming or the psychological healing. But their close connection suggests an underlying process by which increasing dreaminess signals a loosening of the trauma’s grip and a return to the natural variability and freedom of dreaming experience.

This process also accords well with the theory that dreaming is a kind of play, the play of the imagination in sleep. Typical PTSD nightmares can be seen as the antithesis of play. Fixed in content and inescapable in their repetition, they are symptoms of an imagination paralyzed by the harsh reality of the trauma. But with time and the support of caring others a more playful spirit returns, bringing a renewed experiential awareness of creative freedom and the capacity to grow in the future.

A key implication for therapists is the value of monitoring changes in nightmare frequency and content as a potentially helpful window into the healing process. Those who already have active practices in play therapy or art therapy may find this insight especially congenial to their efforts, but any therapist who works with trauma can benefit from more attention to the vicissitudes and playful dynamics of dreaming.

 

Note: This post first appeared in Psychology Today on June 14, 2024.

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New Dream Research in 2019

Dreaming, play, theater, science, religion, social and political crisis.

Jung, Freud, Shakespeare, a troupe of immigrant artists, Alice in Wonderland, Lucrecia de Leon, the US President.

These are the topics and the people I will be discussing most frequently in a series of presentations lining up for 2019.  Each presentation will speak directly to the interests of a particular audience, and each one will also connect to the other talks I’m giving in ways that I hope will lead to a greater interwoven whole.

(All of these conferences and gatherings are still in the planning stages, so details may change.)

 

Society for Psychological Anthropology

Biennial Meeting, Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico

April 4-7

This will be part of a panel on “New Directions in the Anthropology and Psychology of Dreaming” organized by Robin Sheriff and Jeannette Mageo.

“Dreaming, Play, and Social Change”

This presentation offers a novel theory of dreaming—as a highly evolved form of play—and discusses its implications for new research in psychology and anthropology. The theory integrates findings from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, religious studies, and developmental psychology (especially D.W. Winnicott). This approach moves beyond the fruitless debates over the “bizarreness” of dreaming. From the play perspective, bizarreness in dreaming is a feature, not a bug. In dreams the mind is free to play, to explore, imagine, and envision new possibilities beyond the limits of conventional reality. Of special interest to anthropologists, the content of dreams, i.e., what people playfully dream about, mostly revolves around social life. Many of the cognitive abilities vital to waking sociality are also present in dreaming, which correlates with research showing that dream content accurately mirrors people’s most important waking relationships. In some instances, dreaming goes beyond mirroring the social world to actively striving to transform it; the playfulness intensifies, and the dreaming imagination labors to create something new, to go beyond what is to imagine what might be. This visionary potential is often activated during times of social conflict and crisis. Three brief examples will illustrate the playful dynamics of dreaming in relation to a crisis in the dreamer’s community: 1) the prophecies of Lucrecia de Leon, a young woman from 16th century Spain; 2) the creatively inspiring “big dreams” of a group of immigrant artists; and 3) the politically-themed dreams of present-day Americans about their current President.

For more information, click here.

 

International Association for the Study of Dreams

Regional Conference, Ashland, Oregon

May 31 to June 2

This is the general description of the event, which I am helping to host with Angel Morgan. On Saturday morning I will give a talk on the role of dreams in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” both of which will be performed that weekend at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

“Theater, Dreams, and Art”

Shakespeare wrote “All the world’s a stage” and Carl Jung wrote that a dream is theater in which the dreamer is the scene, player, prompter, producer, author, public, and critic. The best plays are like the best dreams: surprising, decentering, mind-expanding, awe-inspiring, emotionally exhausting, and acutely memorable. They are unreal, yet realer than real; retreats into fantasy that catapult us into fresh engagement with the world. Many talented artists, as well as everyday creative people, have said they feel the same kind of freedom to explore their emotions in dreams that they do when they have an encounter with the artistic process. Many often connect the two by first logging their dreams, then drawing on the raw emotional content and imagery from their dream experiences to feed their art. That said, bridging dreams with theater and art tends to offer a wide variety of fascinating approaches. In this conference we hope to inform and inspire dreamers of all ages and backgrounds, as well as those who use theater, dreams, or art in their work, such as: parents, psychologists, therapists, counselors, writers, actors, directors, dancers, visual artists, and musicians.

For more information, click here.

 

International Association for the Study of Dreams

Annual Conference, Kerkrade, the Netherlands

June 20-26

This is part of a panel I am organizing with Svitlana Kobets and Bernard Welt on “Visionary Dreams in Art, Religion, and History.”

“Vision and Prophecy in the Dreams of Lucrecia de Leon”

This presentation explores the visual imagery, religious symbolism, and prophetic warnings contained in the dreams of Lucrecia de Leon, a young woman from 16th century Madrid who was persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition as a traitor and heretic, despite the fact that many of her dream warnings came true.

This is part of a panel Jayne Gackenbach is organizing on the interplay of artistic practice and scientific inquiry.

“Dreaming Is Play: A Bridge Between Art and Science”

This presentation offers a theory that dreaming is a kind of play, the imaginative play of the mind during sleep.  This theory has directly inspired me in new activities with art and artists: supporting regional theater, collaborating with the Dream Mapping Troupe, and cultivating a forested dream library.

For more information, click here.

 

American Academy of Religion

Annual Conference, San Diego, California

November 23-26

This is a “call for papers” topic that will soon be posted by the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) group of the American Academy of Religion, and open for submissions from all AAR members. If the CSR steering committee receives enough good proposals on this topic, there will be a panel session at the conference in San Diego with three or four presentations.

“Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) Approaches to Dreaming”

The rise of psychology of religion in the early 20th century was driven in part by Freud’s and Jung’s efforts to understand the nature of dreams. What would a new 21st century approach to dreams look like, using the resources of CSR? Specifically, to what extent do cognitive functions known to operate in religious contexts (e.g., memory, imagination, metaphor, teleological reasoning, social intelligence, agency detection, dual-systems cognition) also operate in dreaming? To what extent does this shed new light on the various roles that dreams have played in the history of religions (e.g., theophany, healing, prophecy, moral guidance, visions of the afterlife)? Proposals are welcome that draw together detailed accounts of religiously significant dreaming with specific CSR concepts and theories.

For more information, click here.

 

 

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Your Dream Journal: A Gift to Future Researchers

Simple steps you can take to help the future study of dreams.

Sooner or later, people who keep a dream journal realize they are creating a document of more than just personal interest.  They realize their journal is an amazing window into the lived experiences of a unique individual, offering potential insights for psychology, history, anthropology, and many other fields. And they wonder if it would be helpful, under the right conditions, to offer their journals to researchers for study and exploration.

It’s true, dream journals can be profoundly helpful to researchers who want to better understand the powers of the human mind. Some of the most important questions about the nature and meaning of dreams can only be answered by looking closely at the natural flow of dreaming during the course of a person’s life—that is, by looking at a well-tended dream journal.

This, I believe, is the most exciting horizon in the future study of dreams, and we can make huge progress in this direction by gathering high-quality journals from diverse people and exploring them with a variety of creative methods of analysis.

Not everyone who keeps a journal wants to go down this path, and that’s fine. The primary audience of a dream journal is the dreamer him or herself, and it really doesn’t have to expand any further than that.

But if you do have an interest in contributing your journal to the general study of dreams, there are a few simple steps you can take to prepare your journal, and yourself, for the process.

1. Record your dreams well.

The goal is to record your dreams in a way that works best for you, and that researchers can understand and study. Legible handwriting is a good start; many great projects begin with nothing more than a collection of handwritten journals. Audio recordings are another possibility. A file written in a digital word processing format is ideal, and most researchers will want to study a digital transcription of the dreams, in addition to the original recordings.

Make sure to include the date of the dream with each report. Some people date each dream from the day of the morning they wake up; I date my dreams from the day of the night I go to sleep. Either way is fine, just be clear and consistent.

At this point, English is the most widely used language for scholarly analysis.  That will eventually change, but in the meantime, the ideal formatting of your journal would include the original language(s) of the dreams, along with an English translation if needed.

Each dream report should be just that, a report of a dream. It’s best if you include no associations, memories, or comments in the report. Just the dream, please. All of the further associations, etc., can be included in a separate file (see below).

The most helpful dream reports are written in as much detail as possible, especially about the settings, characters, thoughts, and feelings you experience within the dream. And, although it’s not necessary, I think it’s best to report the dream in the present tense—“I see my friend and we say hello,” rather than “I saw my friend and we said hello.”

2. Include additional material.

If you have the time and willingness to collect additional information about your dreams and their context in your life, that would of course be of great interest to anyone studying your journal. The key here is to be organized, and make it clear how the extra material is connected to the dream reports. Otherwise, a researcher could easily get overwhelmed by all the non-dream information, and lose track of the dreams themselves.

It’s helpful, both for the dreamer and for researchers, to know the following: 1) The location of where you were sleeping when you had the dream (the city is usually enough) and the level of familiarity (e.g. home vs. a hotel); 2) The length and quality of your sleep during the night of the dream; 3) The ages of the characters in the dream and their relations to you in waking life.

Drawings, sketches, and diagrams can be very effective for some people in describing their dreams.

Most researchers will be curious about your personal background, family upbringing, etc., so you might consider writing a brief account of your life, sharing whatever you think is most relevant for understanding your dreams.

3. Think about what you want.

Before contacting a researcher, make sure you’ve given some thought to the arrangements you would like to have in place. You should be aware that, sadly, there are very few institutional resources in the world devoted to the study of dreams. Most libraries, universities, and schools of psychology do not have the facilities or financial resources to accept donations of dream journals. However, there are individual scholars in various fields who have experience in working with participants in projects like this. Ideally they would be able to help you with expenses for formatting, translation, etc.

There is currently no commercial value to dream journal data.  Most people are content with two non-financial benefits from the research process. First, they receive a greatly expanded vision of the meaningful patterns in their dreams. No researcher can ever predict where exactly the process will lead, but most people find intrinsic satisfaction in learning more about the deeper meanings of their dreams.

Second, they enjoy the feeling of tangibly helping the cause of dream research and broadening public awareness of dreaming. Once someone learns from personal experience about the transformative powers of dreaming, they naturally wonder how the world might change if more people became familiar with this potent inner source of creativity….

Very important: Think about how much confidentiality screening you want for your dreams. Some people do not mind allowing others to read their “raw” dream reports, while other people prefer to delete some passages and change the names of people and places, to preserve their privacy and the privacy of others. Once the real names in your dreams have been replaced with pseudonyms, it becomes difficult if not impossible to identify with certainty the real characters in the dreams.

And if there are a few dreams in the journal you simply don’t want anyone else to see, that’s okay, go ahead and remove them from what you share.

4. Make sure the arrangements are fair, ethical, and mutual.

Only get involved with researchers you trust. Make sure they understand that if at any point you want to end the research process, that’s it, you’re done, no questions asked.

Take a look at the ethics statement of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and confirm that anyone you deal with is acting in accordance with these principles.

The researchers should report any significant findings to you, and they should consult with you on possible publications that reference your dreams. If you request, the researchers should treat you as a co-investigator, offering you regular updates and opportunities for your feedback and giving you as much public credit as you want to receive.

Your dreams, and your dream journal, are primarily for you. That’s a foundational principle, never to be forgotten. And, in addition to that, beyond the sphere of your personal life, your dreams have an amazing potential to teach many important lessons to other people, now and far into the future.

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Note: this post first appeared in Psychology Today on November 2, 2018.

 

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The Dreams of a Sight-Impaired Person

A study from 2015 about the distinctive patterns in the dreams of “Jasmine,” a young sight-impaired musician.  First presented at the annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Introduction

This presentation demonstrates the use of a digital word search method to study 800 dreams recorded in a personal journal over a period of several years by a female participant.  A “blind” analysis, focusing exclusively on the frequencies of word usage in her dreams, enabled several accurate predictions about her waking life, including the fact that she has been sight-impaired since early childhood.

Methods

The word search method I will describe has relevance for researchers from any background who are interested in the systematic study of dream content.  The great advantage of quantitative approaches to the study of dreams, like the Hall and Van de Castle system, is that they provide objective statistical results that other researchers can compare, replicate, and extend.  However, there are serious disadvantages to traditional hand-coding methods—they are time-consuming, labor-intensive, hard to learn, and vulnerable to problems with inter-coder reliability.  Particularly when the coding systems being employed are untested or idiosyncratic, the results can be disappointing.  Digital word search methods provide a viable alternative: they are fast, easy to use and share, and reliably consistent in their results.  Of course, such methods do not supplant other approaches to dream research.  Digital tools are best used as complementary resources in the study of dreams, providing an empirically grounded assessment of basic patterns of dream content.

Over the past several years, and usually in collaboration with G. William Domhoff and Adam Schneider, I have pursued several studies using word search methods to analyze particular sets or series of dreams:

The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation. Pastoral Psychology 58(2): 93-101.

[Merri, Barb Sanders]

Seeking Patterns in Dream Content: A Systematic Approach to Word Searches. Consciousness and Cognition 18: 905-916.

[Paul, HVDC Male and Female Norms]

Detecting Meaning in Dream Reports: An Extension of a Word Search Approach. (co-authored with G. William Domhoff).  Dreaming 20(2): 77-95.

[Van]

Dreaming in Adolescence: A “Blind” Word Search of a Teenage Girl’s Dream Series. Dreaming 22(4): 240-252.

[Bea]

Digital Dream Analysis: A Revised Method. Consciousness and Cognition 29: 159-170.

[The Engine Man, Barb Sanders, HVDC Male and Female Norms]

All of these studies, and several others not yet published, have led to new insights about using word search methods to identify meaningful patterns in dream content.  I have focused special attention on projects using a “blind analysis” framework in which I start with as little information as possible about the dreamers, focusing exclusively on the statistical frequencies of word usage in their dreams.  I make a point of knowing nothing about the dreamers’ personal lives, and I do not read the narratives of their dreams.  This approach imposes an artificial set of constraints that concentrates all my analytic attention on the word usage frequencies.  By bracketing out every other source of information, I try to glean as many insights as possible from the word usage patterns alone.  The present study is the latest in this series of word search investigations.

Participant

“Jasmine” (not her real name) contacted Domhoff in 2014 and offered to share her lengthy dream journal with him for research purposes.  He then contacted me, and with her permission we arranged a blind analysis process whereby I uploaded four sets of Jasmine’s dream reports into the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb) in order to perform the subsequent word searches.  I knew nothing about Jasmine besides her being female, and my only other bit of knowledge was that the four different sets of her dreams followed a chronological order.

Procedure

Once the dream reports were uploaded, I used the SDDb’s 2.0 word search template to calculate the word usage frequencies for each of 40 categories (many of which overlap with Hall and Van de Castle categories), for each of the four sets of dreams.  I then compared the results with the SDDb Baselines, a large collection of “most recent” dreams from various sources that provides a measuring stick for looking at how a given set of dreams relates to what current evidence suggests are the normal patterns of ordinary dream content.  I also compared the four sets of dreams with each other, looking for patterns of consistency and variation from one set to the next.

Based on these word search findings, I formulated 21 inferences about Jasmine’s waking life.  These inferences derived from the continuity hypothesis that patterns of dream content accurately reflect a person’s concerns, relationships, and activities in the waking world.  I used as a working assumption the idea, supported by previous studies, that frequencies of word usage in dreams are continuous to some degree with the individual’s waking life concerns.  My inferences about Jasmine’s waking life were predicated on that assumption.

I sent the inferences to Domhoff, who forwarded them to Jasmine.  Once I received her responses, I was no longer “blind,” in the sense that now I knew a great deal about her personal life and could see where her waking life concerns had crossed over into her dreaming.  We engaged in several more email exchanges to answer her questions and learn more about various details of her personal upbringing and family background.

Results

Appendix 1 presents the results of the word search analysis using the SDDb 2.0 template.  Below are the 21 inferences I formulated based on the word search results, and Jasmine’s initial responses to them (in bold italics):

1. Jasmine is blind or sight-impaired. yes

2. Hearing is an especially important sense for her. yes

3. Jasmine has very close relations with her family.

Well, it’s complicated.  I would say that I’m close to some of them, particularly on my mom’s side.  My siblings live far away, and so sometimes I miss them and remember things we used to do together.  I have complicated relationships with those on my dad’s side in general. 

4. Her most important relationship is with her mother. Yes!

5. She is very involved with birds, especially chickens.

Yes, I had pet chickens almost my whole life growing up, and other feathered pets as well. J 

6. She enjoys books, reading, and writing. Yes

7. She is very active musically, especially singing and playing

piano.    Yes!

8. She is, or recently has been, a student in college. yes

9. She was raised as a Christian and she now regularly attends church.

Well, this is complicated too.  My family wasn’t really that religious, but sometimes we would go to church when I was little. 

Domhoff also asked that, in addition to making general inferences, I make some specific inferences based on comparing the first two sets to the third set, and the third set to the fourth set.

Looking at the time period covered by the third set compared to the earlier two sets of dreams, Jasmine was:

10. More fearful and anxious. Not sure, I can’t really remember.

11. But also happier than before.

           This is possible.  I started to gain more independence in this period, so I think 10 and 11 might both be true, to a degree. 

12. Less involved with her family. Yes, this jives with the above. J

13. Drinking more coffee. I don’t remember starting then, but I like coffee now.

14. More involved with piano music. yes

15. More involved with religion and church. Yes, because I started playing the organ. 

Looking at the time period covered by the fourth set of dreams compared to the time period covered by the third set, Jasmine was:

16. Less fearful and anxious. Not sure

17. More involved with her family. No, not really.

18. More involved with birds.

No, I didn’t have any pets, and my last chicken and my cockatiel died before this time.  This didn’t really happen, but I can remember dreaming a lot of dreams centering around forgetting to feed, or otherwise take care of them. 

19. More actively engaged with the public world (indicated by more references to movement, travel, work, clothing).   Yes, we could say that I gained even more independence at this time. This is when I got my first real job!

20. Still very musically active with piano and singing. yes

21. Even more involved with a Christian church. Yes, playing the organ and attending regularly, but not always seeing things like they do. 

 

Discussion

Of the 21 dream-based inferences about her waking life, Jasmine confirmed 15 of them as accurate (and 9 of 9 for the general inferences at the beginning).  She said she was not sure about four of the inferences, although she allowed that two of those “might both be true, to a degree.”  That would raise the total number of correct inferences to 17 out of 21. Either way, this is an accuracy ratio comparable to previous studies of the Van series (12 of 14 inferences correct) and the Bea series (11 of 15 inferences correct).

On the issue of her blindness, I based my inference on the fact that her frequency of vision-related words was lower than her frequency of hearing-related words.  That is a very rare pattern that I have only found in one other group—the blind people whose dreams Hurovitz and his colleagues wrote about in their 1999 study.  I’m not sure this will hold up as a universally valid principle, but in Jasmine’s case the relatively low frequency of vision-related words combined with the high frequencies of other sensory terms made it led me to infer that she was blind or sight-impaired in waking life.

In their 1999 study Hurovitz et al. found some evidence of continuity between blind people’s difficulties moving around in waking life and their dreams of movement and transportation.  I did not think of that when formulating my inferences, but now that I look at the findings with Jasmine I do see elevated levels of references to walking & running, falling, and transportation, compared to the frequencies in the SDDb baselines.

The accurate inferences about her family and her mother underscore the strong continuities between waking and dreaming in terms of social relationships.  This is one of the areas where dream content most directly mirrors the feelings and concerns of a person’s waking life.  Further evidence of the same point comes with the correct inference about chickens.  Such a high frequency of words relating to chickens and other birds is quite rare, and in this case it accurately reflects the emotional importance of her relationships with these creatures over the course of her life.

Jasmine’s extremely high frequency of references to art-related words involving music, combined with her high frequency of hearing words, suggested that music plays a big role in her waking life, as indeed it does.  It turns out that Jasmine is quite gifted musically; she sings, plays piano, and in recent years has been playing the organ at churches.  Her religious activities have in fact increased in recent years, as I inferred, but she expressed some discomfort with the doctrinal teachings at these churches.

The inferences about changes in her life from one period of time to another were less successful than the inferences about her waking life in general.  Jasmine disagreed with two of my inferences predicting that between the third and fourth sets she became “more involved with” her family and with birds.  One possible explanation for the mistaken inference is that I used the word “involved” ambiguously in the question.  Jasmine seemed to take it as asking whether or not she had more direct physical interactions with her family and birds.  To that question she answered no, she was not more involved with them in that literal sense, in large part because she had just started a new job and was away from her usual home setting more than ever before.  However, if I had phrased the inference to include not only “physical interactions with” but also “thoughts or emotional concerns about,” she may have responded differently.  At this key transitional time in her personal development, the rise in dream references may have reflected a greater emotional concern about her relations with family and birds, even though she was not actually interacting with them as much as in the past.  As Jasmine herself said in her response, her dreams at this time had many instances of worrying about her birds, despite no longer having any actual birds in her life.

A similar phenomenon arose in the study of Bea’s dreams, when she dreamed more often of her family and her pet dogs when she left home to go away to school.  Here’s a quote from the Bea paper: “In college Bea was physically present with her parents less than before, but she was thinking and worrying about them more than ever. Her anxious feelings, not her physical interactions, carried over into her horrible dreaming.” (248)  The two mistaken inferences I made in analyzing Jasmine’s dreams may, in retrospect, be consistent with what I found in the Bea series, namely that “dreams accurately reflect emotional concerns but not necessarily actual events.” (248)  They are more like a poetry journal than a newspaper article.

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study.  Jasmine’s dream reports were unusually long, so it’s unclear to what extent we can compare her word usage frequencies with those gathered from shorter dreams.  There may have been demand effects in terms of influencing Jasmine to give us socially pleasing answers (although she did disagree with two of my inferences and expressed uncertainty about four others).  The word search method does not distinguish between literal and metaphorical uses of words, and the analysis is vulnerable to distortions from dream reports that include spelling mistakes, non-dream associations, and extraneous comments.  These limits add a note of caution to any conclusions drawn from this approach.

Conclusion

This study of Jasmine’s dreams has shown that a blind word search method can accurately identify many important concerns in a person’s waking life, including her relationships, interests, activities, and personal attributes.   The results add evidence to support of the continuity hypothesis, and they shed new light on patterns in dream content among sight-impaired people.

Looking at the findings of this study in the context of the other word search projects mentioned earlier, I would like to close with the two observations.

First, these methods are helping to lower the cost of entry for innovative dream research.  Databases like the SDDb and Domhoff and Schneider’s DreamBank offer free and open access to large collections of dreams from various sources, along with powerful tools of word searching and statistical analysis.  In coming years there will hopefully be more online resources like these, with even better analytic tools.  This bodes well for our field in terms of enhancing accessibility and stimulating creativity among scholars from various backgrounds.

Second, blind analysis studies are the incubators of proto-algorithms for future technologies of digitized dream interpretation.  What I am doing when I perform a blind analysis is essentially the same as what a well-designed computer program could potentially do when presented with the same information.  My inferences are attempts, using high-quality data and systematic methods of analysis, to identify the highest-probability correlations between dream content frequencies and waking life concerns.  The more of these correlations we identify using blind analysis and other methods, the better those interpretive algorithms of the future will be.

 

Note: this paper has been posted on Academia.edu as SDDb Research Papers #4.

The accompanying appendix has been posted here.

 

 

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A Festival of Dreams

Several hundred people from all over the world gathered in Scottsdale, Arizona this week to discuss the latest findings and methods in dream research.  The 35th annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams  featured five days of panels, workshops, and artistic events.  A lively mix of academic symposium, spiritual retreat, and collective self-experiment, the IASD conference offers a stimulating variety of approaches to the nature and meaning of dreams.

Here are several highlights from the sessions I attended.

Remington Mallet, a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Texas, Austin, described exciting new research on “the ability to communicate in real-time between sleeping and waking.”  This theme has been explored in fictional form in various movies and television shows, from “Inception” and “The Matrix” to “Dream Corp. LLC.” Mallet analyzed the sleeping-waking communications portrayed in these popular media in relation to current scientific knowledge about what is and isn’t possible.  Mallet concluded that the media portrayals are far ahead of the actual science, but new technologies are moving quickly in the very same directions envisioned by the movies and television shows.

Sharon Pastore and Tzivia Gover of the Institute for Dream Studies gave a moving presentation on the common themes in the dreams of those who care for people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.  Building on research on dreams and bereavement, they described how simple methods of exploring dreams can be helpful for the caregivers, whether professionals, friends, or family members: “Dreamwork can guide decisions in the care and communication with loved ones, as well as coping/healing.”  In additional to academic research, Pastore and Gover drew on personal experiences of caring for a parent with dementia to illuminate the value of dreams for the caregiving process.

Robert Stickgold, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, gave a fascinating keynote address on the role of sleep and dreaming in memory formation.  This has been a controversial topic in the field, with some researchers questioning the connection between sleep, dreams, and memory.  Stickgold granted that dreams rarely include episodic memories (i.e., direct, unmodified re-playings of a waking event).  But he laid out extensive evidence to support the idea that different stages of the sleep cycle are important for memory stabilization.  Sleep seems to help people better remember the emotionally relevant aspects of a waking experience.  He didn’t talk a lot about dreams, but he did note some studies “demonstrating the explicit incorporation of waking learning experiences into dream content… [S]uch incorporation is accompanied by enhanced sleep-dependent consolidation of the learning task.”  In other words, the more people dreamed about the learning task, the better they remembered it the next day.  The best part of Stickgold’s address, from my perspective, was his willingness to admit he does not have an easy answer to the “hard question” of how to relate the psychological experience of dreaming with the neurophysiological processes of sleep.  It was a refreshing statement of epistemological humility, and quite a contrast to the views of his predecessor at the Harvard lab, J. Allan Hobson, who had no doubt about the right answer to the hard question.

Linda Mastrangelo, a psychotherapist with a private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, explored in detail a series of her own dreams in which she found unexpected connections with her family heritage, ancestral roots, and places of origin.  She combined psychology, myth, art, and sacred geography to trace out a map of her dreaming landscapes.  The frequency of certain places in her dreams inspired her to learn more about her own spiritual grounding in special features of the land, and to deepen her awareness of the wisdom traditions and ecological teachings that have grown around these places over the ages.  As Mastrangelo made clear, this is a process that anyone can pursue in exploring their own symbolic connections between dreaming and place.

Mark Blagrove, a professor of psychology and director of the sleep laboratory at Swansea University in the UK, proposed a theory of dream function that centered on the evolutionary value of empathy.  Drawing on the studies of Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley about fiction and empathy, Blagrove presented evidence in favor of a theory that telling dreams has the effect of eliciting greater empathy towards the dreamer, which strengthens interpersonal bonding and thus enhances reproductive fitness.  Blagrove made thought-provoking use of Mar and Oatley’s psychological analyses of fictional literature as a powerful means of simulating social experience and boosting our capacity to understand other people who are different from ourselves—that is, boosting our capacity for empathy.  After exploring the connections between empathy and dream-telling, Blagrove passed the microphone to Katja Valli, an assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Skvode, Sweden, who agreed beforehand to offer constructive comments on the proposed theory.  This was an admirable exercise in scholarly dialogue, and a valuable opportunity for everyone in the audience to observe the kind of critical scrutiny that can help improve our ideas and sharpen our awareness.

Next year’s IASD conference will be held June 21-25 in the Netherlands, at the Rolduc Abbey conference facility in Kerkrade, about 200 kilometers south of Amsterdam.  The Abbey is a glorious 12th century structure where the IASD has hosted two previous conferences.  I can’t wait!

Note: this post first appeared on June 21, 2018 in Psychology Today.

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Preparing for the 2018 Dream Studies Conference

The world’s biggest yearly gathering of dream researchers, teachers, artists, and therapists is less than two weeks away.

The 35th annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) will be held June 16-20 in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA.   I attended my first IASD conference in 1988 in Santa Cruz, California, and I have only missed two since then.   This year I am giving several presentations, covering a range of current and emerging interests.  The conferences offer an ideal place to share new ideas and test future plans.  Many of my projects over the years have been the outgrowth and flowering of seeds first sown at an earlier IASD conference.  Below are the seeds I’m planting this year.

June 17-20, 8:00-9:00 am

Morning Dream-Sharing Workshop, with Bernard Welt

“Dream Journaling for First-Time IASD Conference Attendees”

This morning workshop is for first-time IASD attendees, who will learn a variety of methods for starting a dream journal, exploring the dreams that accumulate over time, and discovering surprising potentials for creativity and insight.  Attendees will be able to share their experiences and discuss common themes and questions.  The initial meeting of the workshop will involve introductions, questions about the conference, a discussion of initial interests in dreams, and a list of topics people want to learn more about.  The presenters will take time to introduce the attendees to the basic practice of keeping a dream journal, which some of the attendees may already do.  Also discussed in introductory terms will be the role of dream journals in history, art, religion, and science.  The following sessions each morning will provide ample space for the attendees to process their experiences at the conference, ask questions, share impressions, and correlate different ideas from different sources.  The presenters will make sure in each session to devote at least half the group’s discussion to various practical aspects of dream journaling, and the list of interests and questions that arose from the first session.

 

Sunday, June 17, 4:15 to 6:15 pm

Arts Symposium: Dreaming, Media, and Consciousness

“The Mythic Roots of Cinematic Dream Journeys”

The presentation will start with a discussion of the idea of films as simulated dreams (with “films” also including works appearing on television, some shorter than typical movies, some longer).  The presentation will analyze the elements of cinematic experience in terms of its historical roots in theater, myth, religious ritual, and shamanic journeys.  The focus in this first section will be the creative interplay of art and dreaming within the formal features of cinematic experience.  The second section will focus on two dream-related themes in several films and television shows that have deep mythic roots.  One of these themes is the heroic journey into the realm of dreaming in quest for something of importance or value for the waking world.  The other theme is the danger of becoming trapped in the realm of dreaming and no longer knowing what is waking and what is dreaming, or who is dreaming whom.  These two themes have alternately enchanted and terrified humans throughout history, as witnessed in various myths, stories, and philosophies around the world, and now in the movies and tv shows of the present day.  The power, mystery, and wonder-provoking weirdness of dreaming emerges very clearly in several films and televisions shows, including Dead of Night, Dream Corp. LLC, The OA, and Twin Peaks: The Return.  These and other works will be considered in terms of the two mythic themes of heroic journey and identity paradox.

 

Tuesday, June 19, 11:30 to 1:00

Religious Research Panel: Dreams About God

“The Dreams of God of Lucrecia de Leon”

The dreams of God reported by Lucrecia de Leon, a young woman from 16th century Spain, included dangerously accurate prophecies that brought down the wrath of the Inquisition.  This presentation explores the religious, psychological, and political dimensions of her dreams, especially the theme of dreams as speaking truth to power (drawing on the historical research I did for Lucrecia the Dreamer: Prophecy, Cognitive Science, and the Spanish Inquisition).  The presentation will start with the historical context of Lucrecia and the religious dynamics of her life and community.  It will then look at the 24 dream reports specifically mentioning “God” in the main collection of her dreams, and discuss the main themes and features of these dreams.  This discussion will include use of digital methods of data analysis, Jungian psychology, cognitive science, and metaphorical theology.  The presentation will conclude with reflections on the psychological, political, and religious dimensions of dreaming in historical circumstances and in the present-day.

 

Wednesday, June 20, 2-3:30 pm

Dreamwork Panel: Theories and Work of Jeremy Taylor

“Creating a Dream Library”

Following his death, Jeremy Taylor’s massive collection of books and papers have been entrusted to me, and in this presentation I will share plans for building a library that will provide a long-term archive for Jeremy’s books and papers, plus my books and papers and other dream-related resources people have shared with me.  I will discuss the plans for this library in relation to Jeremy’s tool-kit principle #1 that ALL dreams speak in a universal language of symbol and metaphor.  That principle offers a key for understanding the nature and significance of Jeremy’s library (a vast repository of the world’s mythic, religious, and artistic traditions). I will also address Jeremy’s personal practice of dream journaling and its importance for an appreciation of his life and work.