Attachment representations and early maladaptive schemas in children’s and adolescents’ dreams: A pilot study.

Abstract

Based on the attachment promotion hypothesis of dreaming, this study explored the wake-to-dream continuity of youths' attachment representations and early maladaptive schemas. A total of 19 children and adolescents (12 boys; M = 11.8 years, SD = 2.1) were administered the Child Attachment Interview and completed the self-reported Schema Inventory for Children. They were provided a digital audio recorder to report their dreams for 14 consecutive days. Data from 95 dreams (M = 5 per participant, SD = 2.6) were collected. Dream coding systems were developed to assess attachment-and schema-related content. Bootstrapped correlations were conducted between waking scores and the highest dream-derived scores. In addition, a cluster analysis of dreamswith a subsequent inclusion of the waking scores-was conducted for each participant. The results showed that security-related waking scores were linked to insecurity-related dreaming scores (dismissingness). Conversely, insecurity-related waking scores (dismissingness) were negatively linked to security-related dreaming scores. Security-related waking scores accounted significantly for the merging of the waking attachment profile to a cluster of dreams. No wake-to-dream association was found for attachment-related schemas (Disconnection and Rejection domain). Because dreams depict more insecure than secure attachment-related content, they may function to rehearse different attachment strategies. However, attachment security showed wake-to-dream continuity through cluster analysis, which might be a way to consolidate, in addition to a way to test or improve, attachment representations in childhood and adolescence. Implications for the hypothesized dream functions of attachment promotion, emotion regulation, and threat simulation are discussed.

The neglected object: A history of the concept of dreams in Polish psychiatry and psychology in the interwar period, 1918–1939

“…But in the contemporary science of dreams, Bilikiewicz's ideal of objective, methodologically sound inquiry on the phenomenon of dreams, is being developed in opposition to psychoanalysis, primarily in the neurocognitive approach (Domhoff, 2001(Domhoff, , 2003(Domhoff, , 2022. The diagnostic value of dreams, highlighted by Borowiecki, is nowadays widely appreciated, for instance in tracing trauma (see, e.g., Barrett, 2001;Hartmann, 1998) or attachment disturbances (Bédard et al, 2021;Selterman & Drigotas, 2009). The therapeutic potential of working with dreams, identified by Freud and pursued by Bilikiewicz, Frostig, Markuszewicz, and Praeger, is recognized today, and not only by psychoanalysts (e.g., Ullman, 2006;Ullman & Zimmerman, 2017;Vedfelt, 2017).…”