Predicting impactful dreams: The contributions of absence-related melancholy and absence-related depression.

Abstract

Distressing life events precipitate disturbing dreams in several forms (e.g., nightmares, sleep terrors). Although research has focused on nightmares, some studies have differentiated three types of impactful dreams: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams (Kuiken et al., 2006; Lee & Kuiken, 2015). In two studies, we examined whether contrasting forms of response to distressing life events (absence-related depression and absence-related melancholy) differentially predict these dream types. In an initial in-laboratory session, participants described their loss and trauma histories, and then, in an online session after awakening from an impactful dream, they completed an Impactful Dreams Questionnaire and a Post-Dream Questionnaire. Analyses of variance and structural equation models indicated that absence-related depression independently mediated the effects of loss, trauma, and traumatic loss on nightmare distress. In contrast, the interplay between absence-related melancholy and absence-related depression mediated the effects of loss, trauma, and traumatic loss on the features of existential dreams. These results suggest that dreamers’ response to nightmares resembles reparative regulation of intrusive memories, whereas their response to existential dreams resembles ambivalent reflection on poignant reminiscences. The basis for such reminiscences in existential (and perhaps transcendent) dreams is a level of metacognition that enables attunement to explicitly metaphoric relations between semantically “neighboring” dream representations.

The Epistemic Limits of Impactful Dreams: Metacognition, Metaphoricity, and Sublime Feeling

“…Kuiken and colleagues [17] articulated such a dual process model, although empirical support remains limited to studies that rely on self-report rather than neurophysiological evidence of ANSmodulated attentional adjustments. First, the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic ANS activation plausibly influences the sensory modalities that predominate in the transformations within each dream type.…”

“…A distinctive form of metacognition may give the spontaneous transformations of existential and transcendent dreams their epistemic import. There is replicable evidence [14,15,17,18] that existential dreams and transcendent dreams involve a form of reflective awareness in which dreamers sense themselves from two points of view (e.g., "I became split into two parts; I was able to experience the dream world from either perspective"). Such dual attunement not only departs from the singlemindedness of typical dreams [33] but also from the concurrent awareness of dreaming that is the allure of lucid dreaming [34].…”

The Epistemic Limits of Impactful Dreams: Metacognition, Metaphoricity, and Sublime Feeling

“… * Table entries capture the gist of (a) two phenomenological studies involving a combination of first-person rating scales and open-ended dream description [ 14 , 15 ] and (b) three studies involving rating scales for the features identified in the original phenomenological studies [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]. …”

“…A distinctive form of metacognition may give the spontaneous transformations of existential and transcendent dreams their epistemic import. There is replicable evidence [14,15,17,18] that existential dreams and transcendent dreams involve a form of reflective awareness in which dreamers sense themselves from two points of view (e.g., "I became split into two parts; I was able to experience the dream world from either perspective"). Such dual attunement not only departs from the single-mindedness of typical dreams [33] but also from the concurrent awareness of dreaming that is the allure of lucid dreaming [34].…”

“…Kuiken and colleagues [ 17 ] articulated such a dual process model, although empirical support remains limited to studies that rely on self-report rather than neurophysiological evidence of ANS-modulated attentional adjustments. First, the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic ANS activation plausibly influences the sensory modalities that predominate in the transformations within each dream type.…”