Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 27-52
 2012 Heart-Centered Therapies Association
REM and Non-REM Dreams
“Dreaming Without a Dreamer”
David Hartman and Diane Zimberoff*
Abstract: Research shows mental production throughout our sleep cycle, not
only in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep but also in Sleep Onset, non-rapid
eye movement (NREM) Stage 2, and in Stages 3 and 4, i.e., deep delta Slow
Wave Sleep (SWS). The primary distinction in the quality of dreams in the
various stages of sleep is in the representation of Self. The dreamer can be a
simple passive observer, an active participant, as well he/she can have a
double role, an altered presence, or he/she can be embodied in other people or
objects of the dream. The distinct representations of Self in dreams, with
autoscopic hallucination, also reflects a parallel spectrum of sense of Self in
other altered states (hypnosis, mystical or shamanic journeys, meditation) as
well as pathological altered states (out of body experience, mindbody
dissociation, double Self phenomenon). Indeed, graduated levels of ego
development are represented in just this same spectrum of progression from
subject to object, i.e., from narrow and narcissistic self-interest to expanded
recognition of one’s commonality with a greater whole.
“Our cerebral consciousness is like an actor who has forgotten that he is
playing a role. But when the play comes to an end, he must remember his own
subjective reality, for he can no longer live as Julius Caesar or as Othello, but
only as himself, from whom he has become estranged by a momentary sleight
of consciousness.” Jung, 1964, par. 312
“The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost secret recesses of the soul,
opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any
ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our egoconsciousness may extend. . . . All consciousness separates; but in dreams we
put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in
the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is
in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood” (Jung, 1964,
pp. 144-145).
Humans typically spend about 16 hours of each day awake
and 8 hours asleep. Within sleep, they spend about 2 hours in
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and 6 hours in non-REM
(NREM) sleep. While we dream, the brain cycles through REM
and non-REM sleep stages at 90-minute intervals. Most of our
conscious experience with dreams reflects our REM dreams, and
_____________________________
* The Wellness Institute  3716 – 274th Ave SE, Issaquah, WA 98029  425-391-9716
27
28
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
much less so our NREM dreams. “90–95% of awakenings from
REM sleep produce dream reports, whereas only 5–10% of
awakenings from NREM produce equivalent reports” (Solms &
Turnbull 2002, p. 183).
Research shows oneiric mental production throughout our
sleep cycle, not only in REM sleep but also in Sleep Onset,
NREM Stage 2, and in Stages 3 and 4, i.e., deep delta Slow
Wave Sleep (SWS). The primary distinction in the quality of
dreams in the various stages of sleep is in the representation of
Self. The dreamer can be a simple passive observer of the oneiric
scene, an active participant, as well he/she can have a double
role, an altered presence, or he/she can be embodied in other
people or object of the dream. The significance of these
differences is that the dreamer’s sense of Self probably plays an
important role in organizing and structuring the dream narrative.
The distinct representations of Self in dreams, with autoscopic
hallucination, also reflects a parallel spectrum of sense of Self in
other altered states (hypnosis, mystical or shamanic journeys,
meditation) as well as pathological altered states (out of body
experience, mindbody dissociation, double Self phenomenon).
Indeed, graduated levels of ego development are represented in
just this same spectrum of progression from subject to object,
i.e., from narrow and narcissistic self-interest to expanded
recognition of one’s commonality with a greater whole, across
history and culture and species.
The experience of self in rapid eye movement (REM) dream
sleep is similar to that in waking consciousness, with the
characteristics of a privileged status, a totalizing tendency, and a
sense of a unitary, singular identity. The dreamer, like the awake
ego state, ascribes to itself a special place in the environment it
inhabits, a central role around which other people and events
revolve. Indeed, the personal viewpoint is so innate that it is
difficult to escape, to experience from an altered or expanded
perspective. The experience of self in non-rapid eye movement
(NREM) dream sleep lacks the over-identification with such
characteristics. The REM dream state is like an actor who has
forgotten he is playing a role, a discreet identity; the NREM
dream state is more like an actor who remembers, or perhaps
even who is no longer playing a role at all, whose sense of self is
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
29
expanded beyond the personal to incorporate the gestalt of the
scene.
Freud compared the properties of daydreams and dreams
with those of novels and creative writing (Freud, 1959). “The
subject (the ego) is the hero; in popular fiction, as in many
melodramatic TV shows, other characters undergo splitting –
being sharply divided between those who are good and those
who are bad. These and other characteristics suggest primary
process thought” (Ewing, 2000, p. 158). This description of
dream content, with self as hero and others as good or bad,
applies almost universally to REM dreams. NREM dreams
depart from this formula, however; in NREM dreams the self is
less identified as the “hero”, and others are seldom “bad” or
threatening.
Laboratory evidence demonstrates that dreaming serves three
primary functions: (1) the maintenance of self-cohesiveness, (2)
the restoration of a crumbling or fragmenting self, and (3) the
development of new psychic structures (Fiss, 1986). We might
postulate that the first two of these functions are served by REM
dreams, and the third by NREM dreams. In other words, some
dreams encourage the ego-self to identify with all aspects of the
dream material, to absorb them into the dreamer’s selfrepresentation. Other dreams encourage the dreamer to break any
identification with them, and to objectify them as other in order
to allow dialogue through, for example, active imagination; from
identification to relationship, “progression from an unreflected
identification with their imagos to a reflected relation to them”
(Kugler, 1993). In his doctoral thesis, Jung referred to such a
relationship with “an other within” as doubling of consciousness,
and saw it as fundamentally “new character formations or
attempts of a future personality to break through.” The events
emerging in his dreams, fantasies, and visionary material then
became suggestive of his future personality, of a greater
personality (Smith, 1997, p. 84). Philemon, Jung’s inner guru,
represented a force which was not myself. . . . He said I treated thoughts as if I
generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the
forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you see people in
a room, you would not think that you made those people, or that you were
responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality
of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and
the object of my thought (Jung, 1961, p. 183).
30
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
The progression of advanced ego development, or
individuation, is to build on a secure base of self-cohesiveness,
recognizing seeming fragmenting of oneself as actually the
development of new psychic structures, i.e., psychic objectivity.
“Dreams do not deceive, they do not lie, they do not distort or
disguise, but naively announce what they are and what they
mean…they are invariably seeking to express something that the
ego does not know and does not understand” (Jung 1946, para.
189). What the dream is seeking to express is either what I am
(unreflected identifications and unclaimed projections) or what I
am not (the “other” within).
“If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to
you.” (Rumi – in Frager, 1997, p. 23).
Research into the representation of Self have used the
following progression to distinguish dreamer’s sense of Self
(Occhionero, et al, 2005):
1. No representation. Absence of representation of Self
either as physical presence or thinking subjectivity (for
example in the typical hypnagogic hallucination).
Example: “a kind of white submarine bearing the letters
A and C”.
2. Awareness of one’s own thoughts or presence of Self as
pure thinking agent (the Self image is totally absent).
Example: “I was thinking of problems about my
examination... I had the image of the open
book...nothing else”.
3. Static representation of oneself, total or partial Self body
image, more or less associated to proprioceptive,
kinestetic, agreeable or painful sensations. This
representation is more complete than a simple
noncorporealized thinking presence. Example: “I was
seeing my body lying on the bed, and I had to fall
asleep.... I saw neither the room nor the bed, only my
body”.
4. Representation of oneself as a passive observer of the
dream events. The dreamer is inside the scene, but
totally a passive observer and not taking part in the
oneiric scene. Example: “I was at a gasoline station and I
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
5.
6.
7.
8.
31
was observing this scene: a child was mounting an
inflatable horse which had a motor inside. When the
signal rang the horse bumped against a pole. The child
was my nephew”.
Precise awareness of oneself, both mental and physical,
analogous to wakefulness. The dreamer actively
participates in the event with a plurisensorial
hallucination of Self, like the Self-awareness one
experiences upon waking. Example: “I was in the
country and I was talking with a friend; my girlfriend
was there and we were talking about a building. . . . I
was feeling as if I were in real life”.
Awareness of oneself through identification with other
characters in the dream. The dreamlike experience of
Self is expressed either by way of embodiment in or
identification with other characters or even with objects.
Example: “A lot of beautiful actresses....I’m transformed
and become a famous actor”.
Double representation of Self, in the sense of two
distinct and relatively active roles: e.g. when the dreamer
plays both the role of the chief character and that of
observer or else plays roles of different protagonists.
Example: “I was in a South American country, I was
riding a horse, other people were with me...we were
pursuing a man, who was also myself, because he (I) had
some money”.
This category includes the lucid dream in which the
dreamer is aware of the dreamlike quality of his/her
experience. Example: “I remember a soccer match in
which I was playing. I was in my bed and I was able to
see myself playing soccer. I was aware it was my
imagination”.
Research documents that the representation of Self in REM
dreams is frequently similar to the perception of Self in
wakefulness (point 5 in the scale), with almost all representations
falling in the range of points 4 and 5. On the contrary, in NREM
dreams, including SWS, the dreamer tends to have a
polymorphous representation of Self and his/her own body,
ranging from 1 to 8 (Occhionero & Cicogna, 2011). Because the
32
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
cortex is less active and thresholds are lower during NREMStage 2 than REM, mental activity performed during this time
may be more thoughtlike and less emotional (Occhionero, 2004).
Some of that mental activity is devoted to what we call
consciousness. Primary consciousness is the simple subjective
experience of sensory perception and emotions, which could be
applied to most animals. When we are “aware of being aware”, it
allows us to reflect upon ourselves and our feelings and make
insightful decisions and judgments. This state, dubbed secondary
consciousness, is thought to be unique to humans. When we’re
awake, we have both primary and secondary consciousness.
When we’re in non-dreaming sleep we have neither state of
consciousness; when we are asleep and dreaming we have
primary but not secondary consciousness; when we are asleep
and dreaming a lucid dream we have both primary and secondary
consciousness. There is growing evidence that when we dream in
a NREM or SWS sleep state, we also have a form of both, and
that the “awareness of being aware” is akin to that when an
individual is engrossed in a waking state of default mode
activation. The activity of the brain that remains active during
deep delta sleep is located in the dorsal attention system; the
executive control system and the default mode system (Laufs, et
al, 2006). We will return to this discussion later in the article.
“The secret of dreams is that subject and object are the same” (Campbell,
1991, p. 123).
“The human dilemma is that which arises out of a man’s capacity to
experience himself as both subject and object at the same time. The important
point is a process of oscillation between the two.” (May, 1967, pp. 8–9).
The perspective of being subject of an experience, i.e., the
one who is having the experience, is related to the concept of
“ego-closeness” and “ego-distance” (Schilder, 1965; Voth &
Mayman, 1963). “Things or other persons can be relatively close
to the inner core of the self’s experience, or they can be quite
removed. In this way, an object can be ‘ego-close’ or ‘egodistant’ ” (Feinberg, 2001, p. 30). For most of us, in consentual
reality, it is easy to know that my arm or my beliefs are “egoclose,” i.e., I am connected to them, they are intimately relevant
to me, and they are a part of me. Your arm and your beliefs are
not a part of me; they are “ego-distant” from me. I am attached
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
33
to certain objects as well: my clothes, my car, my home, my
books, and many other objects that have great personal relevance
to me, I experience as “ego-close.”
In the main, people who tend to be ego-close are more
suggestible, more responsive to external stimuli, distractible,
open, exhibitionistic, active socially, emotionally labile and
impulsive, while people who tend to be ego-distant are more
reflective, enjoy solitude, tend to be daydreamers, show
initiative, are less open in their emotional responses, and may be
withdrawn and shy (Voth & Mayman, 1963).
The traits associated with the ego-distant perspective can
reflect a dissociative tendency. With pathology, one begins to
become ego-distant from elements closer and closer to one’s
essence, to experience alienation, depersonalization. It is one
thing to lose connection or attachment to one’s car, or clothes; it
is more serious to lose a sense of one’s body or beliefs being a
part of oneself; at the extreme, one loses that connection with
one’s very essence – soul loss.
For most people in most situations, immediate experience
localizes the self within the limits of the physical body, but
rarely one can experience a second own body in extrapersonal
space. This is a phenomenon described in the literature of
ecstatic Kabbalah from the thirteenth century (Arzy, 2005); in
accounts of patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (Lopez, et al,
2010); in various out-of-body experiences such as astral
projection (Blanke & Arzy, 2005); in certain drug-induced
intoxication states, especially the drug ketamine (Wilkins, et al,
2011); in delusional patients with dementia (Nagy, et al, 2009);
and, of course, in dreams (Brugger, 2002).
Autoscopic hallucinations are the experience of “seeing
oneself” (thus indicating the existence of two selves) as if
looking in a mirror. It is usually one’s face and perhaps upper
parts of the body, and usually lasts for only seconds up to a few
minutes. In an autoscopic hallucination the observer’s
perspective is clearly body-centered, the self and body continue
to be experienced as united, and the visual image of one’s own
body appears as a mirror reversal, that is one is looking at an
image of one’s own body as if in a mirror. Heautoscopy (i.e., the
encounter with one’s own double, an alter ego, or
doppelgänger), is defined as a reduplication not only of bodily
34
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
appearance, but also of aspects of one’s psychological self. The
observer’s perspective may alternate between egocentric and
‘‘alter-ego-centered’’. In out-of-body experiences (OBEs), one’s
self is not reduplicated but appears to be completely dissociated
from the body and observing it from a location in extracorporeal
space. The doppelgänger may serve as a “third party” onto
whom one can transfer one’s own intolerable suffering or one’s
unacceptable aggression. The mirror in an OBE is always
reflective: It allows the self to view both space and one’s
psychological state from a detached but stable perspective.
(Brugger, 2002) With increasing bodily depersonalisation, there
is an increase in the doppelgänger’s ‘‘personalisation’’, that is,
the subject may wonder whether it is the body or rather the
doppelgänger which contains the real self (Brugger, et al, 1994).
In one series of studies, (Nigro & Neisser, 1983) healthy
subjects were required to vividly imagine a variety of events
from autobiographic memory. Each event was then rated
according to the degree of emotionality and self-awareness it
aroused. Although emotionally neutral events (e.g., running for
exercise) tended to be imagined from a body-centered
perspective, emotionally arousing events (e.g., running away
from a threatening situation) were re-experienced from an outof-body-like, third-person perspective. Further, subjects who
have had OBEs (compared to those who never had) more
frequently assume a nonbody-centered, third-person perspective
when re-visualizing their own dreams (Blackmore, 1987, exp. 3).
The construction of representation of Self comes about
through the elaboration of experiences accumulated over one’s
life, integrated through perceptive representation of Self,
episodic Self, and semantic Self-knowledge (Klein, et al, 1996;
Tulving, 1985; Wheeler, et al, 1997).
Here we enter an area of knowledge in which neuroscience
and spirituality intersect. Waking, sleeping, and dreaming
“emerge out of a pure consciousness, a silent void. Where each
state meets the next there’s a little gap, in which Travis
postulates that everybody very briefly experiences transcendental
consciousness. When we go from sleeping to dreaming, or from
dreaming to waking, these little gaps or junction points occur”
(Gackenbach, 1997, p. 109).
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
35
“This is quite similar to a Buddhist explanation of these little
interludes of the clear light of sleep,” (Dalai Lama, 1997, p.
109). “This is precisely the continuity of the very subtle mind.”
“To concern ourselves with dreams is a way of reflecting on ourselves, a way
of self-reflection. It is not our ego-consciousness reflecting on itself: rather, it
turns its attention to the objective actuality of the dream. . . . It reflects not on
the ego but on the Self; it recollects the strange self, alien to the ego, which
was ours from the beginning, the trunk from which the ego grew.” (Jung,
1964, par. 318)
The lucid dream state is one in which the dreamer is aware
that he/she is dreaming, is likely to act deliberately (LaBerge &
Gackenbach, 2000), and to feel that what is happening is as real
as waking experience (LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). The
connection between lucid dream state and the transitional portal
to spiritual transcendence is the intention of the lucid dreamer to
maintain an unbroken continuity of consciousness throughout the
waking state and the dream state. That is true in the western
dream research labs at UCLA (LaBerge, 1985), in Yaqui
shamanism (Castaneda, 1972), or in Tibetan dream yoga (EvansWentz, 1974).
In the Yaqui tradition, the object is to recognize waking and
dreaming as the same, and that therefore both states offer equal
opportunities to develop one’s shamanic powers. The lucid
dreamtime experience frees the personal power and creativity to
pursue shamanic development.
36
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the object of lucid
dreaming is to come to recognize waking and dreaming as the
same, that both are illusion, and that conscious dreamwork can
lead one to the realization of wholeness, perfect balance, and
unity. There are three types of dreams, according to Tibetan
tradition. The first is ordinary dreams that everyone is familiar
with (called “karmic dreams”), which arise from the day’s
activities, from the subconscious, as well as from archetypal
elements and previous life experiences. The second is “clear
light dreams,” which bring energy openings, prognosticatory
dreams and omens, and spiritual visions and blessings. These
dreams hint of other worlds, other lives, and offer a glimpse of
the afterlife. The third type is lucid dreams, in which one is
aware of dreaming. With practice, one develops the capacity to
become lucid during clear light dreams, making them radiant,
luminous, spiritual dreamtime experiences. This frees the mind,
through realization of the transparent, dream-like quality of all
experience, both waking and sleeping.
Yoga divides the functioning of the mind into four
components: manas (the lower or sensory mind), buddhi (the
inner witness), chitta (the bed of memory), and ahamkara (selfidentity) (Archarya, n.d.). During meditation or sleep, the
conscious mind, manas, is quieted and focused. The senses (the
gateways between manas and the outer world) relinquish their
contact with sense objects. Imagination is relaxed. Chitta is the
mind’s capacity to retain experience in memory. It is a vast
reservoir of stored impressions, habit patterns, and desires. In
this unconscious repository, seeds of the future are planted by
our experience in the present.
These transformations in manas are complemented by
changes in buddhi. Buddhi is the aspect of mind identified with
our moral sense and our capacity to acquire self-awareness. As
manas is calmed, buddhi awakens. This is experienced as a silent
blossoming of awareness. As buddhi awakens, consciousness
shines more clearly. A subtle distance is created between
awareness and the contents of the mind. Thus a meditator
becomes the quiet witness of his or her inner experience.
The Sanskrit word ahamkara denotes a state of subjective
illusion, the identification or attachment of one's ego with only a
small part of the human Being (the Self), rejecting everything
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
37
else as "not me". We identify as the player of roles and the
owner of qualities. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says to
Arjuna that ahamkara must be subordinated to the lord, because
the Self cannot be present when one is in a state of ahamkara.
Normal everyday consciousness for most people is to be
immersed in ahamkara. It is less so in our dream state, and even
less so in our deep sleep state. Within each of us lies a pure inner
witness—the knower, or non-ego consciousness. It is this aspect
of our self-awareness that comes more to the fore as we descend
deeper into sleep.
Levels of self-awareness in the dream
We all experience ourselves as both a subject and as an
object, as an ‘I’ and a ‘me’, the storyteller and the one living the
story. This is true in our dreams as well as in our waking
experience. However, in our dreams there is a difference in the I
and the Me vantage point, depending on whether the dream is in
REM sleep or in NREM sleep. First, McAdams (1998) explains
the distinction well:
The ego, or I, is the process of “selfing,” of apprehending subjective
experience and making something out of it. The most cherished thing selfing
makes is the Me, the self-as-object, the concept of the self that is recognized
and reflected upon by the I. Thus, as [William] James suggested, the duplex
self is both I (process) and Me (product). The ego is the I part. The ego
reflects upon the Me. The ego knows the Me. The ego synthesizes the Me out
of experience. The ego makes the Me. . . . Furthermore, positioning the ego in
this way sheds considerable light on both the structure of personality and its
development over time. (pp. 29-30)
It is extremely useful to acknowledge that the ego actually
makes many Me’s (Damon & Hart, 1988; Harter, 1998),
contained within what we are calling the “ego realm” or what
Jung called the “ego complex.” Each Me may fall within the
general category of the ego’s personas and shadows. James
Hillman (2000) describes the process as building the me’s out of
accumulated spare parts from here and there, with the ‘I’
determining whether to reject a given constructed me or not just
as the body’s immune system decides whether to reject an organ
transplant or a skin graft.
I may not know who I am (i.e., the many faces of me), but I
always know that I am (i.e., the I, the self-as-subject). The ‘me’
is built out of parts from here and there; e.g., introjects from
38
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
parents or early authorities, social and cultural norms. The ‘I’ is
an enduring presence with “subject permanence” (Alexander, et
al, 1990, p. 314) that ultimately accepts or rejects the imported
parts. The ‘I’ is equivalent to the body’s immune system when
presented with an organ transplant or a skin graft, it has the
capacity to discern what is native essence and what is foreign, to
claim the former and to reject the latter. As ego development
progresses, defining the object me becomes less important and
transcending the object me (immersion in the subject I) becomes
the focus. Recall Maslow’s (1971) reference to what he called
self-forgetfulness in moments of peak experience, i.e., becoming
less dissociated than usual into a self-observing ego and an
experiencing ego.
The highly developed ego, through its transparency to itself,
is able to achieve a “therapeutic split” (Engler, 1983, p. 48),
becoming both subject and object, observer and observed, a
witness to the dynamic flow of psychic events. This “witness
consciousness” and the self-transcendence upon which it is based
are also foundational ingredients of higher stages of human
development. This corresponds to points 7 and 8 on the dreamer
representation of Self scale (Occhionero, et al, 2005).
Cognitive neuroscientific studies of the Self indicate that
virtually every higher cognitive function is influenced by the
Self: memories are encoded more efficiently when referred to the
Self, feelings and affective responses always include the Self,
fundamental attributions of intentionality, agency, and mind all
concern Selves in interaction with other Selves, and so on.
The concept of Self suggests autobiographical memory,
awareness of emotional and evaluative systems, agency, or the
sense of being the cause of some action, self-monitoring, bodily
awareness, mind-reading or covert mimicking of other’s mental
states, subjectivity in perception, and finally, the sense of unity
conferred on consciousness when it is invested with the
subjective perspective (Churchland, 2002; LeDoux, 2002;
Metzinger, 2003).
These describe mental functions that largely develop after
age eight. Active self representation is largely lacking in
children’s dreams before age 8; passive observer status
apparently is the typical role for children before age 8. In one
study (Foulkes, et al, 1990) 5-8 year olds were awakened from
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
39
REM sleep for dream reports in a sleep laboratory, and reported
on their dreaming as (1) self-as-object (“me”) knowledge, or (2)
self-as-subject (“I”) experience. The 5-7 year olds seldom report
any self activity in their accounts of REM dreams, even though
at the same age children are reporting activities as the most
salient aspect of their waking self concept (Keller, et al, 1978).
Interestingly, all of the above properties of the Self are
notably altered in the dreaming Self—the “I” that dreams
(McNamara, et al, 2007). Although we experience ourselves as a
“Self” when we dream, the Self in many dreams cannot be said
to exhibit normal access to autobiographical memory, normal
emotional reactions, or any of the other standard
phenomenologic properties of the waking Self mentioned above.
For example, we may see a relative in a dream who died years
ago but interact with him/her as if the death never occurred,
thereby indicating that autobiographical memory and emotional
reactions are not operating normally. The sense of agency is
altered as well. Many people report a sense of helplessness when
being chased in dreams, for example. On the other hand, the
dream Self typically has some thing or object toward which he or
she is striving, thus indicating some sense of agency or purpose.
Bodily awareness appears to be globally impaired. Pain, in
particular, occurs only rarely in dream reports. Self-monitoring,
too, is impaired as we uncritically accept very incongruous and
improbable happenings as perfectly normal events (e.g., again—
the long dead relative who is accepted as alive and well, etc.).
While attributions of mental states (indicating a theory of mind
capacity) to other dream characters apparently occur (Kahn &
Hobson, 2005), dreams exhibit an extreme ego-centered
perspective. Everything in the dream is experienced from the
perspective of the dream Self.
Self-awareness in dreaming refers to a concept based on
intrapsychic recognition; specifically, Cicogna and Bosinelli
(2001) refer to self-awareness in dreaming as “the awareness of
being oneself” during the dream (p. 26). In the vast majority of
remembered dreams (which tend to be REM dreams) the
dreamers report self-experiencing (self-awareness): 95.6% in
Kozmova’s study (2006, p. 210) and 95% in Snyder’s (1970, p.
134). Remembered dreams tend to be REM dreams for at least
two reasons: REM dreams predominate later in the night; NREM
40
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
stage 3 sleep predominates during the early part of the night, and
NREM stage 2 occurs across the night. Toward the end of a
night’s sleep, after 8 hours since sleep onset, there are far more
REM than N2 dreams, with a ratio of 11 to 1 (Blagrove, et al,
2011). Also, REM sleep is predominantly theta wave activity in
the brain, and NREM sleep is predominantly delta wave activity,
a much slower level, more removed from the conscious mind’s
dominant beta and alpha frequency wave patterns.
While the dream self appears to be impoverished in its
access to systems like autobiographical memories, bodily
awareness, self-monitoring and that form of consciousness that
yields a unity of experience that the Self “owns,” the dream Self
appears to surpass the waking Self with respect to the experience
of emotions and big-picture perspective.
NREM is composed of four progressively deeper substages.
While positron emission tomographic (PET) studies of NREM
sleep states generally show a global decrease in cerebral energy
metabolism relative to REM, this metabolic decline is not as
marked in Stage 2 NREM as in deeper NREM Stages (3 and 4
slow-wave sleep), and thus Stage 2 NREM sustains relatively
higher levels of brain activation compared to stages 3 and 4
(Maquet, 1995, 2000). Indeed, a recent functional MRI (fMRI)
study found that the frontal cortices were more activated in Stage
2 NREM than in REM sleep (Loevblad, et al, 1999)
A frequent observation by many researchers is that the REM
associated Self is very frequently an aggressor while the NREM
associated Self never engages in aggression. Conversely, the
NREM associated Self frequently initiates friendly interactions
while the REM associated Self only rarely does so. The dream
data suggest at least two Selves: an aggressive Self and a
friendly Self. Like his REM counterpart, the NREM Self
interacts with both familiar and unfamiliar characters in social
encounters that apparently are experienced as largely negative—
yet his responses are much more likely to involve befriending
these characters than is the REM Self. The befriender percent
reaches 90% in NREM as opposed to only 54% for REM
dreams. In short, the dreaming mind creates two dramatically
different Selves who appear in different stages of the sleep cycle,
and engage in differing behavioral strategies in response to
unpleasant social encounters.
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
41
The documentation of high dreamer-initiated friendliness
and low aggression in NREM sleep along with the opposite
profile in REM sleep suggests, in neuropsychological terms, a
kind of double dissociation in site and function. This dissociation
in functional states suggests that the dreaming mind-brain is
composed of at least two fundamental component processes
(REM and NREM) that give rise to distinct computational
processes and psychological states (aggression vs. friendliness).
Although positron emission tomographic (PET) studies of
NREM sleep states generally show a global decrease in cerebral
energy metabolism relative to REM sleep states, a recent
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study found that
the frontal cortices were more activated in NREM than in REM
sleep. Because the forebrain plays such an important role in
impulse control and cognitive functions, that should result in the
inhibition of aggressive impulses or even promote emergence of
nonaggressive, cooperative social impulses in NREM dreams
(McNamara, et al, 2005).
Further, one of the clearest findings of brain imaging studies
of sleep is that the amygdala is highly activated (bilaterally)
during REM sleep compared to NREM sleep and waking (Braun,
et al, 1997; Maquet, et al, 1996; Maquet, et al, 2004; Sutton, et
al, 1996). A great deal of evidence indicates that the amygdala is
involved in processing of emotions such as fear and aggression
— especially in attaching emotional significance to material that
is to be stored in memory and using emotional significance to
decide what experience is to be stored (Hartmann, 2000). This is
highly consistent with the dominance of intense emotion in REM
dreams.
. . . what we call a self has a structure dependent on levels of awareness and
that in dreams we have the opportunity to study this structure in a manner
similar to how a physicist looks at atomic structure in a study of matter. The
dream is the experimental landscape of the movement of the mind just as ‘out
there’ wake reality is the experimental landscape of the movement of the
body. . . .
Thus just as one’s physical growth from infancy is matched by a growth
in one’s self-awareness, a similar sequence of mental growth, self-structuring,
and greater self-awareness may be occurring while we are sleeping. The
dream becomes an opportunity for the evolution of consciousness. As such,
the dream is nature’s experimental honing of the edge of consciousness,
allowing it to come to grips with reality in its fullest expression through the
development of the self-concept (Wolf, 1994, p. 319).
42
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
A Self-Reflectedness Scale has been developed to measure
self-awareness present in dreams (Moffitt, et al, 1988) and has
been incorporated by Gackenbach (1991) in her review of
research on lucid dreaming. Fred Alan Wolfe (1994) has
suggested a correlation between the levels of the Scale and the
stages of personality development of an awake individual.
At the ground level the dreamer is not aware of being present
in the dream, similar to the waking awareness of an infant or
perhaps even fetal awareness. At this level we have pure
awareness with little sense of identification of self and other.
At a second level the dreamer becomes involved in the
dream. This may be akin to early waking childhood experiences
when the child begins to differentiate herself or himself from the
rest of the world, experienced as playful and innocent.
At a third level the dreamer is able to think about an idea,
and thus we have the beginnings of self-awareness. Perhaps this
would equate to preteen or prepubescent years.
At a fourth level the dreamer is aware of the previous levels
of participation and is able to observe the dream, able to reflect
on himself and his effect on others. Thus a sense of self more
fully emerges. This period would equate with puberty and
growth to adulthood.
At the fifth and highest level the dreamer consciously
reflects on the fact that she/he is dreaming. This would be the
lucid state and, in comparison to personality growth, would
correspond to spiritual or mystical awakening. The ability to
wake up in a dream is remarkably similar to the development of
self-awareness in meditative traditions. During meditation and
lucid dreaming a detached but receptive awareness develops
usually accompanied by a sense of great well-being, positive
outlook, and joy.
For Gackenbach (1991) lucidity is not the final point in the
evolution of awareness. It is the starting point for an even higher
level called “witnessing,” in which one passes through five
additional stages. During lucid dreams one is aware that one is
dreaming, and one is still very much contained within a dream
boundary of skin and body. “There is a dream ego, as it were”
(Wolf, 1994, p. 321).
During witnessing, a new state of self-awareness is present.
The dreamer becomes aware of greater detachment from the
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
43
drama of the lucid dream. Emotional content withers; one is
separate from the dream, and does not really care what happens
in the dream content. Choice remains, however, to enter into the
dreaming persona, i.e., the dream ego, or to step back and simply
witness. A further state exists which Gackenbach (1997) calls
Witnessing Deep Sleep, described as “dreamless sleep, very
likely a non-REM condition, in which you experience a quiet,
peaceful inner state of awareness or wakefulness – a feeling of
infinite expansion and bliss, and nothing else” (p. 107).
The Dalai Lama (1997) suggests that the Witnessing Deep
Sleep state is the same as what is called in Tibetan Dream Yoga
the clear light of sleep, and that it is a facsimile of the clear light
of death. This clear light is the very subtle mind which alone
remains continuous through all transitions, such as dying, the
bardo, and conception. “These are junctures, if you like. The
subtlest clear light manifests at the time of death, which is one of
these junctures. These three occasions of death, bardo, and
conception are analogous to the states of falling asleep, the
dream state, and then waking” (pp. 109-110).
Research by Alexander and colleagues (1991) has verified
that witnessing can occur not only in lucid dreams but also
during deep sleep or in any other state of consciousness, and is
therefore legitimately considered a fourth state of consciousness
with sleep, dreaming, and awake. In Buddhist psychology it is
called foundation consciousness, the subjective awareness of the
clear light (Dalai Lama, 1997).
Wolf further postulates a correlation between the levels of
self-awareness and a hierarchy of self-reflective images,
increasingly expansive based on integration of self-image
derived from self-inquiry and self-reference. At the ground level,
images are non-self-reflective, diffuse. At the next level images
are derived from defined, bounded, emotional personal
memories. Next, these memory-images are integrated into
thought forms, generalized social conventions. At the fourth
level, these thought forms are integrated into archetypes,
expanded beyond the personal to collective memory-images.
And at the final level, the archetypal images are integrated into
divine, mystical or cosmic images.
Wolf summarizes that “the tendency would be to descend
levels more readily than to ascend them. Descent results in less
44
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
self-awareness and therefore more automatic, mechanical
behavior. Ascent results in greater choices, becoming aware of
existence in other ‘worlds,’ and more complex imagery with a
higher number of paradoxical features simultaneously knowable”
(1994, p. 336).
These levels of self-awareness and self-reflective images in
dreams appear to parallel the levels of ego development outlined
by Cook-Greuter (1990, 2000). I have found to date no research
to verify that higher levels of ego development correlate with
higher self-awareness or self-reflective images in dreams. CookGreuter does assert that Autonomous persons use dreams,
fantasy, and imagination much more freely than persons at
earlier stages of ego development. If the same correlation is
maintained at higher levels as well, dream content and dream
self-awareness (lucidity and/or witnessing) could be expected to
increase, too.
In fact, Abraham Maslow noticed that there is a relationship
between a person’s needs level on his Hierarchy of Needs
(Physiological, Safety and Security, Love and Belongingness,
Self Esteem, Growth Needs, Self-Actualization) and the kinds of
dreams he had. “Unconscious needs commonly express
themselves in dreams...” (1970, p. 141), and thus a person’s
current experienced position on the hierarchy could conceivably
be assessed from his/her dreams.
Dreaming and the default network
Some regions of the brain are active during both REM
dreaming and during daytime mind-wandering, and they may
also be active at times during NREM sleep. A neural substrate
for dreaming may be based in a subsystem of the waking default
network, which is active when the mind is wandering,
daydreaming, or simulating past or future events (Buckner, et al,
2008; Schacter, et al, 2008; Szpunar, 2010). It is also active at
sleep onset (Horovitz, et al, 2009; Kaufmann, et al, 2006;
Larson-Prior, et al, 2009; Laufs, et al, 2007) partially active
during REM (Pace-Schott, 2010), and still active during Stage 2
of NREM before Stages 3 and 4 occur (Domhoff, 2011).
Mental activity during daytime default network activation
can include “mind-wandering”, in which the individual is not
controlling his thoughts, but is aware of his surroundings, and his
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
45
mentation is nonhallucinatory; the experience is a psychological
state that emerges when the brain is “otherwise unoccupied.”
Another example of default mode network activation is “lost in
thought”, in which the person may or may not be controlling his
thoughts, but he is not aware of his surroundings, and his
mentation is nonhallucinatory (Foulkes & Fleisher, 1975). For a
more thorough discussion of the default mode network, refer to
“Bringing Unconscious Choices to Awareness: ‘Default Mode’,
Body Rhythms, and Hypnosis” (Hartman & Zimberoff, 2011).
Domhoff (2011) summarizes current research into the
development of dream capability in children. To begin with,
children between 3 and 5 report dreams from only 27% of REM
awakenings, and for the most part the content of these dreams is
static, bland, and underdeveloped. Dream reports collected from
children in the sleep laboratory become more “dreamlike” in the
5-to-7 year-olds in terms of characters, themes, and the ability to
introduce action and their own selves into the process, but it was
not until the children were 11 to 13 that their dreams began to
resemble those of adults in frequency, length, emotions, and
overall structure, or to show any relationship to personality. The
same general age groupings seem to apply to a child’s capacity
to enter into a hypnotic trance state.
The default network consists of at least two distinct
subsystems. The two subsystems are connected by two “hubs”.
The first subsystem, which is called the “dorsal medial prefrontal
cortex system,” includes the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, the
temperoparietal junction, the lateral temporal cortex, and the
temporal pole of the temporal lobe. This subsystem is activated
by instructions to think about the person’s present situation or
present mental state (present self). A second subsystem, called
the medial temporal lobe system, includes the ventral medial
prefrontal cortex, posterior inferior parietal lobule, retrosplenial
cortex, parahippocampal cortex, and hippocampal formation, and
is called into action by thinking about personal situations and
decisions in the future (future self) (Andrews-Hanna, et al,
2010).
Dreaming represents a slightly different subsystem than
either of these two, one that can function without the need for
environmental monitoring or for episodic memories, and that can
access the perspective of both the present self and the future self.
46
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
In fact, there may well be separate subsystems for REM and
NREM dream states, accessing varying degrees of objectivity
from an ego-oriented self, present or future. The default
network(s) and dreams share a particular kind of thinking that
involves imaginatively placing oneself in a hypothetical scenario
and exploring possible outcomes, usually called simulation
(Schacter, et al, 2008). This capacity for imaginatively
constructing hypothetical events is also a well-researched aspect
of hypnosis.
Dreaming and hypnosis
Stross and Shevrin (1962, 1968, 1969) concluded that
thought organization during hypnosis shares some common
elements with thought organization during dreaming: hypnosis
leads to heightened access to subliminal stimuli and subliminally
presented images are also found in dreams (Bob, 2004).
We know that corticolimbic circuits make sorting decisions
on a pattern-matching basis, enabling learning by cumulative
experience. The brain regions responsible for this activity have
been shown to be highly activated in REM sleep (Braun, 1999),
and by inference in hypnotic trance states. One of the hallmarks
of cognitive processing under hypnotic trance is the access to
seeing behavior patterns that are not easily visible by the
everyday mind. For this reason, age regression is valuable to
allow an individual to recognize a pattern of behavior in his life
that stretches from childhood through until today.
Hypnotic dreaming is one technique for working with dream
material in hypnotherapy, involving having a client re-dream a
nighttime dream while in a hypnotic state. The client then
describes the dream to the therapist, followed by a return to the
hypnotic state with the encouragement to explore further some
aspect of the dream (Sacerdote, 1967). The heart of Sacerdote’s
hypnotic dream work is that neither client nor therapist needs to
consciously interpret the dream material, but rather associations
arise spontaneously (Linden, et al, 2006).
Clinical significance of dreams
Post-traumatic stress disorder is characterized by disturbed,
hyperaroused REM-sleep (Ribeiro, 2004, p. 4). Trauma has been
shown to result in impaired development of the corpus callosum
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
47
(Teicher, 2000) and of the hippocampus. “Dream work over time
may actually help to reverse such effects, encouraging inter and
intra hemispheric connectivity” (Wilkinson, 2006, p. 53), due to
the bottom-up nature of dreaming mentation and the reliance on
symbol and metaphor. Metaphor lights up multiple centers in the
brain, enabling increased connectivity (Levin, 1997, and Modell,
1997, cited in Pally, 2000). Also, dreaming consciousness
contrasts with waking consciousness in that the brain is activated
in a ‘bottom-up’ manner rather than the ‘top-down’ mode of
waking thought. In dreaming, ascending activity begins in the
brain stem, progresses through the limbic system to the medial
frontal cortex (that deals with arousal and attention). The
executive portions of the frontal cortex (i.e., the dorsolateral
cortex and the orbito pre-frontal cortex) are deactivated (Hobson
& Pace-Schott, 1999). Incidentally, these are similar patterns of
brain activation as found in hypnosis.
Low voltage – high frequency EEG brain waves,
characteristic of the REM dream state and of the hypnotic trance
state, originate in the brain stem and move upward via neural
pathways through the limbic system (amygdala and
hippocampus) to the neocortex (executive functioning) (Henry &
Stephens, 1977, p. 111). This bottom-up processing tracks the
triune brain system proposed by MacLean: an old reptilian brain
dominated by basic instinct, hierarchical dominance, and
ritualized behaviors; a more recent paleomammalian brain
(limbic) focused on attachment needs and forming social units
based on affection, interdependence, and collaboration; and a
distinctly human neocortex brain capable of self-awareness,
future orientation, and altruistic emotions.
Kuiken and associates (2006) describe three types of
impactful dreams, distinguishable not by any single
characteristic (e.g., fear) but rather by coherent profiles of
attributes involving feelings and emotions, motives and goals,
sensory phenomena, movement characteristics, and dream
endings. One type, nightmares (anxiety dreams), involve features
such as intense fear, harm avoidance, vivid olfactory and
auditory phenomena, and physical metamorphoses. A second
type, existential dreams, involve features such as intense
sadness, separation and loss, the emergence of strong and clear
bodily feelings, and spontaneous feeling change. A third type,
48
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
transcendent dreams (archetypal dreams), involve features such
as feelings of awe, magical accomplishment, extraordinary
sources of light, and shifts in visual-spatial orientation.
Nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams all
include visual discontinuities (i.e., explicit “looking,” visual
anomalies, and sudden shifts in location); all three types involve
relatively intense affect, especially during dream endings; and
the imagery of all three types seems “real” to their dreamers
even after awakening.
Despite such evidence of their shared intensity, anecdotal
comments indicated that these dreams had very different effects
on waking thoughts and feelings. Dreamers suggested that (1)
nightmares were followed by lingering environmental vigilance
(e.g., apprehension about invisible dangers); (2) existential
dreams were followed by reflection on feelings that the dreamer
was previously reluctant to acknowledge (e.g., distress related to
loss); and (3) transcendent dreams were followed by
consideration of previously ignored spiritual possibilities (e.g.,
attunement to preternatural phenomena). These dreams’
apparently contrasting functions motivated more careful
examination of their effects on waking thoughts and feelings.
References
Alexander, C. N., Davies, J. L., Dixon, C. A., Dillbeck, M. C., Oetzel, R. M., Druker, S.
M., Muehlman, J. M., & Orme-Johnson, D. W. (1990). Growth of higher stages of
consciousness: Maharishi’s Vedic psychology of human development. In C. N.
Alexander & E. J. Langer (Eds.), Higher Stages of Human Development:
Perspectives on Adult Growth, 386-340. New York: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, C. (1991). A conceptual and phenomenological analysis of pure
consciousness during sleep. Lucidity, 10(1&2), 129.
Andrews-Hanna, J., Reidler, J., Sepulcre, J., Poulin, R., & Buckner, R. (2010).
Functional-anatomic fractionation of the brain’s default network. Neuron, 65, 550562.
Archarya, S. S. (n.d.) Sleep, Dreams and Spiritual Reflections. Hardiwar, India:
Shantikunj.
Arzy, S. (Nov 2005). Speaking with one’s Self: Autoscopic phenomena in writings from
the ecstatic Kabbalah. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(11), 4-29.
Blackmore, S. J. (1987). Where am I? Perspectives in imagery and the out-of-body
experience. Journal of Mental Imagery, 11, 53–66.
Blagrove, M., Fouquet, N. C., Henley-Einion, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F., Davies, A. C., et
al. (2011). Assessing the Dream-Lag Effect for REM and NREM Stage 2 Dreams.
PLoS ONE 6(10), e26708.
Blanke, O., & Arzy, S.(Feb 2005). The out-of-body experience: Disturbed self-processing
at the temporo-parietal junction. Neuroscientist, 1(1), 16-24.
Bob, P. (2004). Dissociative Processes, Multiple Personality, and Dream Functions.
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 58(2), 139-149.
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
49
Braun, A. (1999). ‘Commentary on the new neuropsychology of sleep’.
Neuropsychoanalysis, 1, 2.
Braun, A., Balkin, T., Wesenten, N., Carson, R., Varga, M., Baldwin, P., et al. (1997).
Regional cerebral blood flow throughout the sleep-wake cycle. Brain, 120, 1173–
1197.
Brugger, P. (2002). Reflective mirrors: Perspective-taking in autoscopic phenomena.
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 7(3), 179-194.
Brugger, P., Agosti, R., Regard, M., Wieser, H.-G., & Landis, T. (1994). Heautoscopy,
epilepsy, and suicide. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 57,
838–839.
Buckner, R., Andrews-Hanna, J., & Schacter, D. (2008). The brain’s default network:
Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences, 1124, 1-38.
Campbell, J. (1991). Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion (D.
K. Osbon Ed.). New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Castaneda, C. (1972). Journey to Ixtlan. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Churchland, P. S. (2002). Self-representation in nervous systems. Science, 296, 308–310.
Cicogna, P., & Bosinelli, M. (2001). Consciousness during sleep. Consciousness and
Cognition, 10, 26–41.
Cook-Greuter, S. (1990). Maps for living: Ego-development stages from symbiosis to
conscious universal embeddedness. In M. L. Commons, C. Armon, L. Kohlberg, F.
A. Richards, T. A. Grotzer, & J. D. Sinnott (Eds.), Adult Development vol. 2,
Models and Methods in the Study of Adolescent and Adult Thought, 79-104. New
York: Praeger.
Cook-Greuter, S. R. (2000). Mature ego development: A gateway to ego transcendence?
Journal of Adult Development, 7(4), 227-240.
Dalai Lama. (1997). In F. J. Varela (Ed.), Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An
Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama. Boston, MA: Wisdom
Publications.
Damon, W., & Hart, D. (1988). Self-Understanding in Childhood and Adolescence. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Dening, T. R., & Berrios, G. E. (1994). Autoscopic phenomena. British Journal of
Psychiatry, 165, 808-817.
Domhoff, G. W. (2011). The neural substrate for dreaming: Is it a subsystem of the
default network? Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 1163-1174.
Engler, J. (1983). Vicissitudes of the self according to psychoanalysis and Buddhism: A
spectrum model of object relations development. Psychoanalysis and
Contemporary Thought, 6(1), 29-72.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1974). Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Ewing, K. P. (Apr 2000). Dream as symptom, dream as myth: A cross-cultural
perspective on dream narratives. Sleep and Hypnosis, 2(4), 152-159.
Feinberg, T. E. (2001). Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Fiss, H. (1986). An empirical foundation for a self psychology of dreaming. Journal of
Mind and Behavior, 7, 161-192.
Foulkes, D., & Fleisher, S. (1975). Mental activity in relaxed wakefulness. Journal of
Abnormal Psychology, 84, 66-75.
Foulkes, D., Hollifield, M., Bradley, L., Terry, R., & Sullivan, B. (1991). Waking Selfunderstanding, REM-Dream Self Representation, and Cognitive Ability Variables
at Ages 5-8. Dreaming,1(1).
Foulkes, D., Hollifield, M., Sullivan, B., Bradley, L., & Terry, R. (1990). REM dreaming
and cognitive skills at ages 5-8: A cross-sectional study. International Journal of
Behavioral Development, 3447-3465.
Frager, R. (Ed.) (1997). Essential Sufism. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.
50
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
Freud, S. (1959). Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming. The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 9: 141-153. London: Hogarth
Press.
Gackenbach, J. (1991). Frameworks for understanding lucid dreaming: A review.
Dreaming, 1(2), 109.
Gackenbach, J. (1997). In F. J. Varela (Ed.), Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An
exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama. Boston, MA: Wisdom
Publications.
Harter, S. (1998). The development of self-representations. In W. Damon (Series Ed.) &
N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol. 3. Social, Emotional,
and Personality Development (5th Ed.), 553-617. New York: Wiley.
Hartman, D., & Zimberoff, D. (2011). Bringing unconscious choices to awareness:
‘Default mode’, body rhythms, and hypnosis. Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies,
14(2), 3-75.
Hartmann, E. (2000). The Central Image Makes “Big” Dreams Big: The Central Image as
the Emotional Heart of the Dream. Dreaming, 18(1), 44-57.
Henry, J. P., & Stephens, P. M. (1977). Stress, Health, and the Social Environment: A
Sociobiological Approach to Medicine. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Hillman, J. (2000). The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life. New York: Ballantine
Books.
Hobson, J. A., & Pace-Schott, E. F. (1999). Response to commentaries on the new
psychology of sleep: Implications for neuropsychoanalysis. Neuropsychoanalysis,
1(2), 206–224.
Horovitz, S., Braun, A., Carr, W., Picchioni, D., Balkin, T., Fukunaga, M., et al (2009).
Decoupling of the brain’s default mode network during deep sleep. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 106, 11376-11381.
Jung, C. G. (1946). ‘Analytical psychology and education’ CW 17.
Jung, C. G. (1961). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Jung, C. G. (1964). The meaning of psychology for modern man: Civilization in
transition. In The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 10. New York: Bollingen
Foundation.
Jung, C. G. (1964). Civilization in Transition, Collected Works 10. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Kahn, D., & Hobson, J. A. (2005). Theory of mind in dreaming: Awareness of feelings
and thoughts of others in dreams. Dreaming, 15, 48–57.
Kaufmann, C., Wehrle, R., Wetter, T. C., Holsboer, F., Auer, D., Pollmacher, T., et al
(2006). Brain activation and hypothalamic functional connectivity during human
non-rapid eye movement sleep: An EEG/fMRI study. Brain, 129, 655-667.
Keller, A, Ford, L. H., & Meacham, J. A (1978). Dimensions of self-concept in preschool
children. Developmental Psychology, 14, 483-489.
Klein, S. B., Sherman, J. W., & Loftus, J. (1996). The role of episodic and semantic
memory in the development of trait self-knowledge. Social Cognition, 14, 277-291.
Kozmova, M., & Wolman, R. (2006). Self-awareness in dreaming. Dreaming, 16, 196214.
Kozmova, M., & Wolman, R. N. (2006). Self-Awareness in Dreaming. Dreaming, 16(3),
196–214.
Kugler, P. (June 1993). The ‘subject’ of dreams. Dreaming, 3(2).
Kuiken, D., Lee, M., Eng, T., & Singh, T. (2006). The Influence of Impactful Dreams on
Self-Perceptual Depth and Spiritual Transformation. Dreaming, 16(4), 258–279.
LaBerge, S. (1985). Lucid Dreaming. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
LaBerge, S., & Gackenbach, J. (2000). Lucid dreaming. In E. Cardeña & S. J. Lynn
(Eds.), Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, 151182. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
LaBerge, S., & Rheingold, H. (1990). Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. New
York: Ballantine.
Hartman & Zimberoff: REM and Non-REM Dreams
51
Larson-Prior, L., Zempel, J., Nolan, T., Prior, F., Snyder, A., & Raichle, M. (2009).
Cortical network functional connectivity in the descent to sleep. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States, 106, 4489-4494.
Laufs, H., Holt, J. L., Elfont, R., et al. (2006). Where the BOLD signal goes when alpha
EEG leaves. Neuroimage, 31, 1408-18.
Laufs, H., Walker, M. C., & Lund, T. (2007). Brain activation and hypothalamic
functional connectivity during human non-rapid eye movement sleep: An
EEG/fMRI study -- its limitations and an alternative approach. Brain, 130, 75-84.
LeDoux, J. E. (2002). Synaptic self: How our brains become who we are. New York:
Viking.
Levin, F (1997). Integrating some mind and brain views of transference: the phenomena.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 45, 1121–1152.
Linden, J. H., Bhardwaj, A., & Anbar, R. D. (April 2006). Hypnotically enhanced
dreaming to achieve symptom reduction: A case study of 11 children and
adolescents. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 48(4), 279-289.
Loevblad, K. O., Thomas, R., Jakob, P. M., Scammell, T., Bassetti, C., Griswold, B. S., et
al. (1999). Silent function magnetic resonance imaging demonstrates focal
activation in rapid eye movement sleep. Neurology, 53, 2193–2195.
Lopez, C., Heydrich, L., Seeck, M., & Blanke, O. (Feb 2010). Abnormal self-location
and vestibular vertigo in a patient with right frontal lobe epilepsy. Epilepsy &
Behavior, 17(2), 289-292.
Maquet, P. (1995). Sleep function(s) and cerebral metabolism. Behavioral Brain
Research, 69, 75–83.
Maquet, P. (2000). Functional neuroimaging of normal human sleep by positron emission
tomography. Journal of Sleep Research, 9, 207–231.
Maquet, P., Peters, J., Aerts, J., Delfiore, G., Degueldre, C., Luxen, A., et al. (1996).
Functional neuroanatomy of human rapid-eye-movement sleep and dreaming.
Nature, 383, 163–166.
Maquet, P., Ruby, P., Schwartz, S., Laureys, S., Albouy, G., Dang-Vu, T., et al. (2004).
Regional organization of brain activity during paradoxical sleep (PS). Archives
Italiennes De Biologie, 142, 413–419.
Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Row.
Maslow, A. H. (1971). The creative attitude. In The Farther Reaches of Human Nature,
55-68. New York: Penguin Books.
McAdams, D. P. (1998). Ego, trait, identity. In P. M. Westenberg, A. Blasi, & L. D. Cohn
(Eds.), Personality Development, 27-38. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
McNamara, P., McLaren, D., & Durso, K. (2007). Representation of the Self in REM and
NREM dreams. Dreaming, 17(2), 113–126.
McNamara, P., McLaren, D., Smith, D., Brown, A., & Stickgold, R. (2005). A ‘Jekyll
and Hyde’ within: Aggressive versus friendly interactions in REM and Non-REM
dreams. Psychological Science, 16(2), 130-136.
Metzinger, T. (2003). Being No One: The Self-model Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Modell, A. (1997). Reflections on metaphors and affects. Annual of Psychoanalysis, 25,
219–233.
Moffitt, A., Purcell, S., Hoffman, R., & Wells, R. (1988). Dream psychology: Operating
in the dark. In J. I. Gackenbach, & S L. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious Mind, Sleeping
Brain: Perspectives on Lucid Dreaming. New York: Plenum.
Nagy, A., Tenyi, T., Fekete, S., Kovacs, A., & Voros, V. (Jan 2009 Supp 1). P03-105
Clonal pluralization as an interpretative delusion after autoscopic experience - an
extremely rare psychopathological phenomenon. European Psychiatry, 24, S1104S1104.
Nigro, G., & Neisser, U. (1983). Point of view in personal memories. Cognitive
Psychology, 15, 467–482.
Occhionero, M. (2004). Mental processes and the brain during dreams. Dreaming, 14(1),
54–64.
52
Journal of Heart-Centered Therapies, 2012, Vol. 15, No. 2
Occhionero, M., & Cicogna, P. (2011). Autoscopic phenomena and one’s own body
representation in dreams. Consciousness & Cognition, 20(4), 1009-1015.
Occhionero, M., Cicogna, P., Natale, V., Esposito, M. J., & Bosinelli, M. (2005).
Representation of Self in SWS and REM Dreams. Sleep & Hypnosis, 7(2), 77-83.
Occhionero, M., Natale, V., Esposito, M. J., Bosinelli, M., & Cicogna, P. (2000). The
self-representation in REM and in SWS sleep reports. Journal of Sleep Research,
9(s1), 142.
Pace-Schott, E. (2010). The neurobiology of dreaming. In M. Kryger, T. Roth, & W.
Dement (Eds.), Principles and Practices of Sleep Medicine (Fifth ed., pp. 563-575).
Philadelpha: Elsevier Saunders.
Pally, R. (2000). The Mind-Brain Relationship. London & New York: Karnac.
Ribeiro, S. (2004). Towards an evolutionary theory of sleep and dreams. MultiCiencia, 3.
Schacter, D., Addis, D., & Buckner, R. (2008). Episodic simulation of future events:
Concepts, data, and applications. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
1124, 39-60.
Schilder, P. (1965). Medical Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Snyder, F. (1970). The phenomenology of dreaming. In L. Madow & L. H. Snow (Eds.),
The Sychodynamic Implications of the Physiological Studies on Dreams, 124–151.
Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Solms, M., & Turnbull, O. (2002). The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the
Neuroscience of Subjective Relationship. New York: Other Press.
Stross, L., & Shevrin, H. (1962). Differences in thought organization between hypnosis
and the waking state; An experimental approach. Bulletin of the Meninger Clinic,
26, 237-247.
Stross, L., & Shevrin, H. (1968). Thought organization in hypnosis and the waking state.
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 147, 272-288.
Stross, L., & Shevrin, H. (1969). Hypnosis as a method for investigating unconscious
thought processes. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 17, 100135.
Sutton, J., Breiter, H., Caplan, J., Huang-Hellinger, K., Kwong, J., Hobson, A., et al.
(1996). Human brain activation during REM sleep detected by fMRI. Neuroscience
Abstracts, 22, 690.
Szpunar, K. (2010). Episodic future thought: An emerging concept. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 5, 142-162.
Teicher, M. (2000). Wounds time won’t heal. Cerebrum, 2(4).
Tulving E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1-12.
Voth, H. M., & Mayman, M. (1963). A dimension of personality organization: An
experimental study of ego-closeness-ego-distance. Archives of General Psychiatry,
8(4), 366-380.
Wheeler, M. A., Stuss, D. T., & Tulving, E. (1997). Toward a theory of episodic
memory: The frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness. Psychological Bulletin,
121, 331-354.
Wilkins, L. K., Girard, T. A., & Cheyne, J. A. (Sept 2011). Ketamine as a primary
predictor of out-of-body experiences associated with multiple substance use.
Consciousness & Cognition., 20(3), 943-950.
Wilkinson, M. (2006). The dreaming mind-brain: a Jungian perspective. Journal of
Analytical Psychology, 51, 43–59.
Wolf, F. A. (1994). The Dreaming Universe: A Mind-expanding Journey into the Realm
where Psyche and Physics Meet. New York: Simon & Schuster.