theoretical issues. inspired by sigmund freud and david foulkes
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Theoretical issues. Inspired by Sigmund Freud and David Foulkes. A functional theory of dreams and dreaming, implies a model of the mind. In assessing dream content, is the reprentational mode and not the thematic content, that is of theoretical interest. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Theoretical issues.Inspired by Sigmund Freud and David Foulkes
• A functional theory of dreams and dreaming, implies a model of the mind.
• In assessing dream content, is the reprentational mode and not the thematic content, that is of theoretical interest.
• If you can’t account for dreams, you are not even close to getting it right.
Established wisdom concerning dreams
• Dreams are primarily visual, but any sense modality can be experienced in dreams
• There has not been established any convincing connection between dream content and any psychological variable
• Dreams are usually commonplace in narrative and setting, even if bizarre dreams do exist
• Dreams are believable world analogs (Foulkes)• The single-mindedness of dreams
(Rechsthaffen)
Hartmann’s data
• After proper examination of 456 dream reports from various sources, no instance of reading, writing or typing was found, and only one (questionable) instance of calculating.
• In a questionnaire to frequent dream recallers, around 90% answered that they “never” or “hardly ever” dreamt of reading, writing, calculating and typing.
• Through the same questionnaire it was ascertained that the respondents used a substantial part of their waking time to read, write or type.
Methodological notes concerning Hartmann’s data
• A remarkable agreement between the two judges in the content analysis of the 456 dream reports.
• The sample was of persons highly interested in dreams and probably also knowable of dream research and with strong convictions concerning dreams and their own dreamlife.
• It was 60% return of the questionnaire, which probably underlines that the sample consists of persons knowable and highly interested in dreams.
• The frequency of the items in their dream life was assessed by the respondents on a five point scale.
Responses to the question:”I have had dreams where I was watching TV”
”I have had dreams where I was reading””I have had dreams where public persons participated”
Adapted from Hem 1994, Hem 2002
0102030405060708090
100
see tv reading public
yes
no
Method
• A questionaire with some 60 items
• Each question is a yes/no-question, or a modified version with four alternatives
• The questionaire was distributed in the beginning of a lecture, it was answered in the pause and it was delivered at the end.
The sample
• The sample was an opportunity sample of first year students in mathematics and psychology (mean age 20years)
• The questionaire was answered by 242 persons (161 in mathematics and 81 in psychology)
• The return rate was assessed at over 90%• The gender rate of the sample is 41% female
and 59 % men.• Among the mathematic students 74% is men,
among psychology students 20% is men.
The Århus-data as a support of Hartmann’s observations
• Only 10% says “yes” to the statement “I have had dreams where I was reading”
• The support is strengthened by the different sample and sampling method
• The support is also strengthened by the fact that the results are the same, even if the style of quistionnairing is different
The Århus data as a supplement to Hartmann’s data
• That only 5% can say yes to the statement “I have had dreams where I was watching TV” put that activity in the same bracket as the three r’s as far as dreaming is concerned
• It underlines the lack of connection between the waking activity and the dream content that Harmann observe for the three r’s
• However watching TV is a very different activity from the three r’s, it is not an activity “involving rapid, serial, focused, feed-forward processing”, which Hartmann suggests is the reason why the three r’s are relatively lacking in dreams
The lack of politics and societal events in dreams
• Hall’s observations concerning the lack of the mentioning of the Hiroshima bomb in his first collected dream samples
• That we seldom do dream of politics or societal events is part of the assumed common knowledge
• The Århus data support this notion
Responses to the question:
Have you ever had dreams about political or societal issues?Have you ever dreamt that you participated in war?
Have you ever had expllcit sexual dreams?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
politics sexuality
often
sometime
seldom
never
war
Adapted from Hem 1994, Hem 2002
i
Dreams of reading and politics: Two cases
• The dream of Volume IV of Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital”
• The dream of a homoerotic scene with President Giscard d’Estain
Two theoretical notions
• Hobson: The waking ego does the best of a bad job in making a coherent cognitive experience out of a randomly activated limbic system and cortex. The three r’s might not have a limbic representation /function
• Hartmann: The three r’s is, in PDP-language, feed forward processes, while dreams are expression of an auto-associative net, guided by the dominant emotional concern of the dreamer.
Dreams as an expression of a noncultivated mind
• The waking mind is in many respects a soft-ware product, created through a societal process. The human mind is a cultural product.
• The sleeping mind might not have taken part in the general cultivation of the processes of the mind
• The mentality that is exhibited in dreams, and the mental capacities exhibited, might therefore be the same as before we started civilizing ourselves