Dreaming and insight.
Christopher L Edwards, Perrine Ruby, Josie E Malinowski, Paul D Bennett, Mark Blagrove
Frontiers in Psychology 2013 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00979 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 11 |
| Population | Participants in dream group discussion sessions |
| Intervention | Ullman Dream Appreciation technique |
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Keywords | Dream Rem sleep Insight Psychotherapy |
| Key findings | The Ullman Dream Appreciation technique effectively establishes connections between dream content and recent waking life experiences, yielding high Exploration-Insight scores comparable to therapist-led dream interpretation. |
Abstract
This paper addresses claims that dreams can be a source of personal insight. Whereas there has been anecdotal backing for such claims, there is now tangential support from findings of the facilitative effect of sleep on cognitive insight, and of REM sleep in particular on emotional memory consolidation. Furthermore, the presence in dreams of metaphorical representations of waking life indicates the possibility of novel insight as an emergent feature of such metaphorical mappings. In order to assess whether personal insight can occur as a result of the consideration of dream content, 11 dream group discussion sessions were conducted which followed the Ullman Dream Appreciation technique, one session for each of 11 participants (10 females, 1 male; mean age = 19.2 years). Self-ratings of deepened self-perception and personal gains from participation in the group sessions showed that the Ullman technique is an effective procedure for establishing connections between dream content and recent waking life experiences, although wake life sources were found for only 14% of dream report text. The mean Exploration-Insight score on the Gains from Dream Interpretation questionnaire was very high and comparable to outcomes from the well-established Hill (1996) therapist-led dream interpretation method. This score was associated between-subjects with pre-group positive Attitude Toward Dreams (ATD). The need to distinguish "aha" experiences as a result of discovering a waking life source for part of a dream, from "aha" experiences of personal insight as a result of considering dream content, is discussed. Difficulties are described in designing a control condition to which the dream report condition can be compared.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Other as a Nightmare: The Israeli-Arab Encounter as Reflected in Children's Dreams in Israel and the West Bank Jewish and Arab fifth to seventh graders living in various settings in Israel and the... | 1989 | Qualitative content analysis | n = 212 |
| Nonwaking Responses to Waking Stressors: Dreams and Nightmares1 Men from the cohort eligible for military duty during the Vietnam Conflict, varying in... | 1990 | Survey interview study | n = 442 |
| Communing with the Gods: The Dreaming Brain in Cross-cultural Perspective | 2011 | Phenomenological study | |
| Partial memory reinstatement while (lucid) dreaming to change the dream environment. Lucid dreamers | 2020 | Qualitative study | |
| Strange themes in pandemic dreams: Insomnia was associated with more negative, anxious and death‐related dreams during the COVID‐19 pandemic Global survey participants | 2022 | Longitudinal mixed-methods study | n = 2,240 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 18
- REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics Pharmacological Reviews June 20, 2019
- Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming Frontiers in Psychology August 18, 2015
- Incorporation of fragmented visuo-olfactory episodic memory into dreams and its association with memory performance Scientific Reports October 30, 2019
- Targets of erotic dreams and their associations with waking couple and sexual life. Dreaming March 1, 2021
- Converging theories on dreaming: Between Freud, predictive processing, and psychedelic research Frontiers in Human Neuroscience February 16, 2023
and 13 more in the library
Cites 13
- Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives Frontiers in Psychology 2011
- Self-Reported Effects of Dreams on Waking-Life Creativity: An Empirical Study The Journal of Psychology 2007
- The continuity and discontinuity between waking and dreaming: A Dialogue between Michael Schredl and Allan Hobson concerning the adequacy and completeness of these notions heiDOK (Heidelberg University) 2011
- Themes of Continuity International Journal of Dream Research 2011
- A replication of the 5-7 day dream-lag effect with comparison of dreams to future events as control for baseline matching. Consciousness and Cognition June 1, 2011
and 8 more in the library