We tested the hypothesis (McNamara 1996; Zborowski and McNamara 1998) that dream recall and dream content would pattern with interpersonal attachment styles. In study I, college student volunteers were assessed on measures of attachment, dream recall, dream content and other psychologic measures. Results showed that participants who were classified as ‘high’ on an ‘insecure attachment’ scale were significantly more likely to (a) report a dream, (b) dream ‘frequently’, and (c) evidence more intense images that contextualize strong emotions in their dreams as compared with participants who scored low on the insecure attachment scale. In study II, 76 community dwelling elderly volunteers completed measures of attachment, and dream recall. Participants whose attachment style was classified as ‘preoccupied’ were significantly more likely to report a dream and to report dreams with higher mean number of words per dream as compared with participants classified as ‘securely’ attached or as ‘avoidant’ or as ‘dismissing.’ Dream recall was lowest for the avoidant subjects and highest for the preoccupied subjects. These data support the view that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and/or dreaming function, in part, to promote attachment.

We hypothesized that counteifactual (CF) thought occurs in dreams and that cognitive operations in dreams function to identify a norm violation or novel outcome (recorded in episodic memory) and then to integrate this new content into memory by generating counteifactuals to the violation. In study 1 we compared counteifactual content in 50 dream reports, 50 pain memory reports and 50 pleasant memory reports (equatedfor word length) and found a significantly greater number of CFs in dream and in pain memory reports relative to pleasant memory reports. In study 2 we used a more liberal methodfor scoring CF content and analyzed 34 dream reports obtainedfrom elderly individuals engaged in an ongoing study ofneuropsychologic, health and religiosity variables. Study 2 also examined neuropsychologic associations to CF content variables. In the elderly sample and with our more liberal scoring procedures we found that norm violations along with counteifactuallike attempts to correct the violations occurred in 97% of reports. In 47% of these cases (roughly half of all reports), attempts to undo the violation obeyed at least one constraint on mutability typically observed in laboratory studies of CF processing. Cognitive operations associated with attempts to undo the norm violation (e.g. transforming focal actors or the most recent causal antecedent of the violation) were significantly correlated with measures of right frontal function. We conclude that dreaming may involve a process of learning from novel outcomes (particularly negative outcomes) by simulating alternative ways of handling these outcomes through counteifactual cognitive processes.

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