Learning to Remember Dreams

Abstract

HENRY REED received his PhD from UCLA in 1970 and is a shirtmaker. For the past three years he has also served as a psychology professor at Princeton University, where he has worked with others in a program of education and reality testing to construct interfacings between awakening and dreaming consciousness. Recently, Henry has been consulting with the Clinic and Research Center for Jungian Psychology in Zumch, on the mcubation of healing and inspirational dreams; and with the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, on a transpersonalized ritual for parapsychological research. Besides talking to plants and animals, his greatest joy is to fly on his bicycle, and whenever possible, on foot. This paper is dedicated to Gayle, whose loving reminders have helped Henry recognize what he knows. ABSTRACTThe possibility of learning to remember dreams was explored with the cooperation of a group of participant-observers who maintained dream diaries for 12 weeks and were selected on the basis of their desire to experience improved dream recall. A self-administered dream recall rating scale was devised which provided measures of several aspects of memory for dreams. The participants apparently increased their ability to retrieve dream memories, but their actual level of dream recall performance was subject to motivational fluctuations. On the other hand, although the participants claimed to have developed no control over the vividness of their memory for dreams, this aspect of their dream recall nevertheless evidenced substantial improvement. The possibility of improving memory for dreams being confirmed, future research should provide ( a ) more information concerning the control processes governing dream recall, and ( b ) information concerning how to increase volitional access to these processes.

Effect of stressful and "neutral" moving images and still images on dreaming

“…Also, the novel experience and reinforcement of recovering more dreams in one night than in four months or more at home, possibly ~ould increase the initial motivation of Nonrecallers over Recallers. This is consistent with findings by Reed (1973) (3) is too small to be other than suggestive.…”

“…Failure to recall dreams has been attributed variously to: factors affecting memory consolidation; awakening interference; salience of the dream itself; repression; lack of motivation to recall; low receptivity to inner life events; low ego strength; low anxiety; and high anxiety (Cohen, 1974b;Domhoff & Gerson, 1967;Farley, Schmuller, & Fischbach, 1971;F'reud, 1900Giora, 1973;Hiscock & Cohen, 1973;Reed, 1973;Tart, 1962;Wolpert, 1972).…”

Emotions in Diary Dreams

“…Hence, the training of dream recording may exert an influence on the extent of positive emotions in recalled dream experiences. To elaborate further on this hypothesis, it would be interesting to carry out a study similar to Reed's (1973), which formed a dream group to increase dream recall frequency in its participants and found an increased extent of positive emotions in diary dreams recorded throughout the course of the study, as well.…”

Findings From the International Lucid Dream Induction Study

“…Participants also rated how much content they could recall from each dream according to four categories, operationalizing dream recall as Dream Quantity (L DQ). The measure was developed by Aspy (2016) and is based on an earlier measure developed by Reed (1973). Category ratings are converted to numerical values ("Fragmentary" = 1, "Partial" = 2, "Majority" = 4, "Whole" = 8) and summed (higher scores indicate superior dream recall).…”