Emotions during Non-Lucid Problem-Solving Dreams as Evidence of Secondary Consciousness,

Abstract

Emotions dreamers experience in dreams are considered simple experiential awareness and theorized as primary consciousness. The current study investigated emotions as part of a core variable of the problem-solving phenomenon. 979 dreams were analyzed by the method of grounded theory with questions applied through constant comparative analysis to individual instances of dreamers' problem solving. The 29 dreams yielded represent the core variable with 86 different components of cognitive and psychological processes accompanied by dreamers' emotional awareness in emotional signaling, stimulating, self-regulating, or action prompting or preventing roles. The critical emotional awareness during efforts to resolve difficult situations alerts dreamers and allows them to shift from being a passive recipient in the mode of primary consciousness with simple awareness of emotions into the active initiatory and participatory mode of secondary consciousness in which dreamers enrich their problem-solving efforts by reflective and intellectual abstract analyses. These mental efforts are considered an adaptive, self-organizing, goal-oriented process. Future isomorphically based prospective investigations of problem-solving dreams could focus on neural correlates of emotional awareness as a critical component of non-lucid dreamers' capacities to use secondary consciousness.