Kluwer Academic/Human Sciences Press, Inc., New York City
Dreaming Volume 13, Number 2, June 2003
Contents
Dream Imagery Becomes
More Intense After 9/11/01
Ernest Hartmann, Robert Basile
Page 61
Can Dreams During Pregnancy
Predict Postpartum Depression?
Tamar Kron, Adi Brosh
Page 67
Working with Dreams in
Psychotherapy: The Therapists’ Perspective
Rachel E Crook, Clara E. Hill
Page 83
The Use of the
Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and Wales
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, Adam Fish
Page 95
The Words of Adolescents’
Dreams, A Quantitative Analysis
Alfio Maggiolini, Paolo Azzone, Katia Provantini, Daniele Viganò, Salvatore
Freni
Page 107
Erratum
Page 119
Abstracts
Dream Imagery Becomes
More Intense After 9/11/01
Ernest Hartmann and Robert Basile
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2)
61-66, June 2003.
We examined a series of twenty dreams - the last ten dreams recorded before
9/11/01 and the first ten dreams recorded after 9/11/01 - from each of sixteen
individuals in the United States who regularly record all their dreams. Blind
scoring using established scales demonstrated that dreams after 9/11/01 were
characterized by more intense imagery, but were not longer nor more “dreamlike,”
compared to data before 9/11/01. The dreams after 9/11/01 did not contain
significantly more content related to the attacks. The results show that
traumatic events such as the attacks of 9/11/01 have a detectable effect on
dreams - specifically an increase in dream image intensity - in a population of
dream recorders. Whether this finding can be generalized to the entire
population is not clear from this preliminary study. The results of this study
are consistent with previous findings that dream image intensity is related to
emotional arousal.
KEY WORDS: dreams; trauma; 9/11/01; contextualizing image; central image;
dream image.
Can Dreams During Pregnancy
Predict Postpartum Depression?
Tamar Kron and Adi Brosh
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2)
67-81, June 2003.
Postpartum depression (henceforth PPD) is an emotional disturbance which
occurs in as much as 20% of the childbearing population. This study attempted to
ascertain whether dreams, offering unconscious expression of internal emotional
processes, could help to identify early signs of PPD.
It was hypothesized that differences would be found in the “emotional dream
work” of pregnant women who either later developed or did not develop PPD. 166
women participated in the two stages of the study. During stage I, the women
were interviewed in the last trimester of their first pregnancies. The interview
included a demographic questionnaire and an account of a dream. During stage II,
the women were interviewed 6-10 weeks after giving birth. The second interview
included only the EPDS scale for affirming or denying the occurrence of PPD.
The findings of the study confirm the hypothesis that dreams of pregnant women
can differentiate among women who are or are not at-risk for PPD. It was found
that more unpleasant dreams and dreams expressing apprehension were found among
women who did not later develop PPD, than among women who did develop PPD.
KEY WORDS: postpartum depression; prediction of dreams during pregnancy.
Working with Dreams in
Psychotherapy: The Therapists’ Perspective
Rachel E. Crook and Clara E. Hill
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2)
83-93, June 2003.
129 therapists completed a 70-item questionnaire about working with dreams in
psychotherapy. Almost all therapists (92%) worked with dreams in psychotherapy
at least occasionally (92%). Therapists reported that 15% of clients had brought
dreams into therapy during the past year. Therapists engaged more in exploratory
than insight- or action-oriented activities when working with dreams. They were
more likely to work on dreams with clients who had troubling dreams or who were
interested in working on dreams, but were unlikely to work on dreams with
schizophrenic or psychotic clients. Those clinicians who were more likely to
work with dreams had more training, higher estimated dream recall, more positive
attitudes toward dreams, and did more personal dream work than clinicians who
were not likely to work with dreams.
KEY WORDS: dream interpretation; attitude towards dreams; therapist
training; dream activities.
The Use of
the Strauch Scale to Study Dream Reports from Sacred Sites in England and
Wales
Stanley Krippner, Paul Devereux, and Adam Fish
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2)
95-105, June 2003.
Thirty-five volunteers spent between one and five nights in one of four
unfamiliar outdoor “sacred sites” in England and Wales where they were awakened
following rapid eye movement periods and asked for dream recall. They also
monitored their dreams in familiar home surroundings, keeping dream diaries.
Equal numbers of site dreams and home dream reports were obtained for each
volunteer. Two judges, working blind and independently, evaluated each of the
resulting 206 dream reports, using the Strauch Scale which contains criteria for
identifying “bizarre,” “magical,” and “paranormal” elements. Of the 103 site
dream reports, 46 fell into one of these categories, versus 31 of the home dream
reports. A number of explanations exist for this difference, including
expectancy, suggestion, the effect of unfamiliar surroundings, the nature of the
volunteers' awakenings, and possible anomalous properties of the sacred sites.
The latter possibility, however, is unlikely due to the fact the 22 volunteers
reported site dreams containing Strauch Scale items, while 20 reported home
dreams containing these content items, a minimal difference.
KEY WORDS: content analysis; dream reports; sacred sites.
The Words of Adolescents’
Dreams: A Quantitative Analysis
Alfio Maggiolini, Paolo Azzone, Katia Provantini, Daniele Viganò, and Salvatore
Freni
Dreaming: Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Vol 13(2)
107-117, June 2003.
This research detects the most common words recurring in 326 adolescents’
dream language. The analyzed dreams have been previously recorded and then
transcribed. Grouping words, we obtained the frequency of the main parts of
speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns). Among the nouns, far more
frequently represented are terms that refer to important objects of an affective
relation. Other significant nouns relate to objects linked to both familial and
extra-familial environments. Words related to family relations declined in
frequency as age increased and were substituted by terms that refer to relations
among friends and to the external world and its objects. Some of these results
can be usefully compared with the conclusions derived from the application of
other methods of content analysis. This method using dream language analysis
could be applied to research concerning dream content, also through specific
dictionaries (groups of words defined and classified in relation to a certain
theme).
KEY WORDS: dream content; text analysis; adolescence.
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