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Don Kuiken

2 papers in the library · 1 citation · publishing 2009-2024

Papers

The Epistemic Limits of Impactful Dreams: Metacognition, Metaphoricity, and Sublime Feeling

Brain Sciences May 22, 2024 Don Kuiken 1 citation

Dreams that continue to influence the dreamer after waking fall into three types: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams. Existential and transcendent dreams involve metacognitive appraisal of the tension between metaphoric and literal assertions, producing a felt sense of inexpressible realizations. The poetic effect arises from juxtaposing semantically dense but abstractly distant metaphoric topic and vehicle, leading to emergence of abstract attributes shared by both. Successive metaphoric/literal transformations yield higher-level metacognition consistent with a neo-Kantian account of sublime feeling—sublime disquietude in existential dreams, sublime enthrallment in transcendent dreams. Aftereffects are thematically iterative living metaphors with abstract but not totalizing ontological import.

DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14060528 (opens in new tab) Sublime Existentialism Feeling Literal mathematical logic +7

Dream-enacting behaviors in a normal population.

Sleep December 1, 2009 Tore Nielsen, Connie Svob, Don Kuiken

Dream-enacting behaviors—such as speaking, crying, smiling, and moving during sleep—are common in healthy young adults, with prevalence rising from 36% to 98% depending on how specifically questions are asked. Women report more speaking, crying, fear, and smiling or laughing during dreams, while men report more sexual arousal. These gender differences persist even after accounting for other sleep disorders and dream recall. The behaviors are largely independent of other parasomnias like sleepwalking or nightmares, except for dream-talking, which is linked to sleep-talking. They are not related to alexithymia but are moderately tied to absorption. Social desirability does not affect reporting.

DOI: 10.1093/sleep/32.12.1629 (opens in new tab) Full text (opens in new tab)