Dreams: The Contemporary
Theory
Ernest Hartmann, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Tufts University School of Medicine
Director, Sleep Disorders Center
Newton Wellesley Hospital
I was walking along a beach somewhere.
It wasn’t exactly like any of the beaches I
know, I think my friend Jan was with me.
Suddenly, a huge wave reared up out of the
ocean and totally engulfed us. I’m not sure
what happened after that. I struggled and
struggled to get to the surface. There was no
one else with me. I’m not sure whether I
made it, and I awoke, terrified.
Fear, Terror
A huge tidal wave is coming at me.
A house is burning and no one can get out.
A gang of evil men, Nazis maybe, are chasing me.
Helplessness, Vulnerability
I dreamt about children, dolls — dolls and babies all
drowning.
He skinned me and threw me in a heap with my
sisters; I could feel the pain, I could feel everything.
There was a small hurt animal lying in the road.
Guilt
A shell heads for us (just the way it really did) and
blows up, but I can’t tell whether it’s me or my
buddy Jack who is blown up.
I let my children play by themselves and they get run
over by a car.
I leave my children in a house somewhere and then I
can’t find them.
Grief
A mountain has split. A large round hill or mountain
has split in two pieces, and there are arrangements I
have to make to take care of it.
A huge tree has fallen down.
I’m in this huge barren empty space. There are ashes
strewn all about.
Scoring for the CI (Central Image)
SCORING DREAMS FOR CONTEXTUALIZING IMAGES
Definition: A contextualizing image is a striking, arresting, or compelling image — not simply a story —
but an image which stands out by virtue of being especially powerful, vivid, bizarre, or detailed.
EMOTION LIST
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
fear, terror
helplessness, vulnerability, being trapped, being immobilized
anxiety, vigilance
guilt
grief, loss, sadness, abandonment, disappointment
despair, hopelessness (giving up)
anger, frustration
disturbing — cognitive dissonance, disorientation, weirdness
shame, inadequacy
disgust, repulsion
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
power, mastery supremacy
awe, wonder, mystery
happiness, joy, excitement
hope
peace, restfulness
longing
relief, safety
love (relationship)
If there is a second contextualizing image in a dream, score on a separate line.
Dream
ID#
1. CI?
(Y/N)
2. What is it?
3. Intensity
(rate 1-3) 4. What emotion?
5. Second emotion?
I was walking along a beach somewhere.
It wasn’t exactly like any of the beaches I
know, I think my friend Jan was with me.
Suddenly, a huge wave reared up out of the
ocean and totally engulfed us. I’m not sure
what happened after that. I struggled and
struggled to get to the surface. There was no
one else with me. I’m not sure whether I
made it, and I awoke, terrified.
Contextualizing Image (CI) Score
1.6
1.4
1.2
CI Score
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Most Recent
Dream
Dream that
Stands Out
Most Recent
Daydream
Daydream that
Stands Out
Contextualizing Image (CI) Scores
Mean ± S.E.M.
0.8
0.7
0.6
CI Score
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Waking
Sleep Onset
NREM
REM
CI Intensity
2.50
CI Intensity Score
2.00
1.50
1.00
Mean of Student Group
0.50
0.00
0
1
2
3
4
5
Cases
6
7
8
9
10
CI Scores in the Trauma Group (N=10) Versus Matched
Student Control Group (N=30)
(Mean ± S.E.M.)
1.6
1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Trauma Group
Student Control
Group
CI Scores in Students
Reporting Abuse or No
Abuse
1.12 ± 1.2
1.2
1
0.8
0.65 ± 1.0
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Abuse
* t = 2.63, p = 0.01
No Abuse
9/11 STUDY
Methods: Participants
• Complete data sets obtained from 44
persons, living in the US who have recorded
their dreams every morning for years.
• 33 women, 11 men. Mean age about 50.
Methods
• Each participant provided 20 dreams —
the last ten recorded before 9/11 and the
first ten after 9/11, without any selection or
alteration.
Methods: Scoring
• All dreams were scored on a blind basis for
CI intensity, emotion pictured by the CI,
dreamlikeness, and vividness.
• Dreams were also scored on three ad-hoc
scales of content: 1) attacks 2) buildings
like WTC or pentagon 3) airplanes, and on
a scale of nightmare-likeness
1.5
1.0
.5
0.0
-.5
-1.0
1
4
7
SUBJECT
10 13
16
19 22
25 28
31
34 37
40
43
Results: After vs. Before 9/11
CI
Bef
Aft
Dif
1.10
1.28
.18
Length 12.93 11.88 -1.04
t
p
3.29 .001 one-tailed
1.3
NS
D-like
4.50
4.54
.04
.47
NS
Viv
4.22
4.24
.02
.17
NS
Results, continued
Bef
Aft
Dif
t
p
Bldgs.
.059
.104
.045
1.70
NS
Planes
.045
.061
-.016
.85
NS
Attacks
.034
.098
.064
2.74
<.01
NM-like
.213
.307
2.28
<.05
.094
Results: Nightmares (16 Ss)
Before 9/11
After 9/11
Definite nightmares
(agreement between two scorers)
3
2
Less definite
(one scorer definite/one scorer possible )
3
3
Results: Nightmares (cont’d)
Total possible nightmares
(by either scorer)
Before 9/11
After 9/11
30
33
All results not significant
Conclusions:
If we can generalize from these 44 dream
journalers, our dream imagery overall was more
intense after 9/11/01 than before.
Conclusions (continued):
However, dreams after 9/11/01 were not
significantly longer, more dreamlike or more
vivid. They did not contain more references to
buildings or airplanes. They did contain
slightly more references to attacks and they
were scored as slightly more nightmare-like.
Conclusions (continued)
• Consistent with previous studies the
intensity of the dream’s central image (CI)
appears to be a measure of emotional
arousal or emotional power.
Creating a “dream” in the laboratory
• If a dream involves the picturing of
emotion (“contextualizing emotion”), could
one create a dream or something very
dream-like by allowing waking imagery
(daydream) to develop under the influence
of strong emotion?
Dreamlikeness Scale (Mean ±
S.E.M.)
5
4.8
4.6
4.4
4.2
4
3.8
Recent
Lab
Lab
Daydream Daydream Daydream
w/ Emotion
Recent
Dream
Bizarreness Scale (Mean ± S.E.M.)
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
Recent
Lab
Lab
Daydream Daydream Daydream
w/ Emotion
Recent
Dream
Where To Look For CIs (Easiest to Hardest)
• Dreams after trauma
• Dreams in stressful situations
• Dreams in special situations, such as pregnancy
• Dreams in patients in whom a dominant emotion or concern is obvious
• Dreams in experimental situations (thirst, hunger, external stimuli)
• Dreams in a patient or client about whom information is available
• Ordinary dreams from unknown dreamers
The more we know the dreamer’s emotional
state (emotional concerns) the clearer (“less
crazy”) the dream appears to us.
Dreaming makes connections.
Dreaming makes connections more
broadly than waking in the nets of
the mind.
Dreaming makes connections in the looser, less
tightly structured portion of the nets.
Dreaming avoids the tightly structured, focused,
sensory input processing-motor output feedforward regions and modes of processing in the
net.
“Nets of the Mind”
CBF in REM Sleep vs. Slow Wave Sleep
We do not dream of “reading,
writing and arithmetic”
• Results from 250 good dream recallers
RESULTS:
Question A (Frequency of the “3 R’s” in dreams)
READING
48% of subjects said “never,” and an additional 36% said “hardly ever,”
although the group spent 150 ± 94 minutes per day reading.
WRITING
56% of S’s said “never” and an additional 36% said “hardly ever,”
although this group spent 106 ± 87 minutes per day writing.
TYPING
75% of S’s said “never” and an additional 19% said “hardly ever,”
although this group spent 98 ± 97 minutes per day typing.
CALCULATING
73% of S’s said “never” and an additional 22% said “hardly ever,”
although this group spent 23 ± 29 minutes per day calculating.
Relative Prominence Scores
for Six Activities: X ± S.E.M.
6
5
4
3
2
1
Walking
Writing
Talking
Reading
with Friends
Sexual
Activity
Typing
Questionnaire study in 250 frequent dreamers. The scale on the left runs
from 1: “The activity is far more prominent in my waking life; it hardly
occurs in my dreams,” to 7: “The activity is far more prominent in my
dreams; it hardly occurs in my waking life.”
The connections are not made randomly.
The process is guided by emotion.
Dreaming contextualizes emotion.
More powerful emotion leads to
more intense dream imagery.
Thus the intensity of the dream
image is a measure of the power
of the dreamer’s emotion.
Figure 1. A CONTINUUM
Focused
Waking thought
Looser,
Reverie
Less-structured free association
Waking thought daydreaming
Dreaming
What
dealt with?
perceptual input,
math symbols
signs, words
fewer words, signs,
more visual-spatial
imagery
almost pure
imagery
How?
logical relationship —
if A then B
less logic, more noting or
picturing of similarities,
more metaphor
almost pure
picturemetaphor
Selfreflection:
highly self-reflective —
“I know I am sitting here
reading.”
less self-reflective,
more “caught up” in the
process, the imagery
in “typical
dreams”
total thereness,
no self reflection
Boundaries:
solid divisions,
categorizations,
thick boundaries
less rigid categorization,
thinner boundaries
merging
condensation
loosening of
categories,
thin boundaries
A CONTINUUM
Focused
Waking thought
Looser,
Reverie
Less-structured free association
Waking thought daydreaming
C
Sequence of
ideas or
images:
A
B
C
D
A
B
C
A
D
Dreaming
B
B
A
D
C
D
Processing:
relatively serial; net functions chiefly
as a feed-forward net.
net functions more as an auto-associative net
Subsystems:
activity chiefly within structured
subsystems
activity less within, more across or outside of
structured subsystems
Contextualizing Image (CI) Score
1.6
1.4
Thick Boundary Subjects
Thin Boundary Subjects
1.2
CI Score
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
Most Dream
Most Daydream
Recent Stands Recent Stands
Dream Out Daydream Out
Most Dream
Most Daydream
Recent Stands Recent Stands
Dream Out Daydream Out
Large portions of the cortex (what we usually think of as
“mind”) are basically an image-generator.
During focused waking (left-end of the continuum) the
cortex can be constrained into acting as a calculator, a
reader or filer of texts, a carefully calibrated bodynavigator, etc.
Towards the right-end of the continuum it relaxes into
pure story-imagery, guided by the emotional state (as in
dreaming).
Imagery of the Dream
(Contextualizing Image)
Underlying
Emotional State
Imagery of the Dream
(Contextualizing Image)
Underlying
Emotional State
The cortex
acts as an
imagemaker
Pathways involving
amygdala and other
subcortical “limbic”
areas
Focused Waking
Sensory Input
“Task”
Image
Generator
Memory
Emotional
State
Dreaming
Sensory Input
“Task”
Image
Generator
Memory
Emotional
State
Engine
Wheels
TRUCK
Metal
Gasoline
Highways
A Journey
CAR IN
MOTION
Motion
Beginnings, ends
Goal
Brakes
Start-stop
RELATIONSHIP
Speed
Obstacles
In control, out of control
Exhilaration, danger
Crash?
The functions of dreaming
Dreaming connects broadly. It interconnects. It
interweaves traumatic (and other) new material. This
interconnecting has both an immediate function in
“smoothing things out” or “calming a storm” and a longer
term function in term of providing broader connections
— an increase in connections rather than simply
consolidation of memory.
Dreaming has a quasi-therapeutic function: dreaming
allows the making of connections in a safe place.
The functions of dreaming (continued)
The cross connections, interconnections, weaving
in, etc. all occur whether or not a dream is actually
remembered.
A remembered dream can, of course, be functional
in other ways. A new connection in dreaming can
play an essential role in problem solving, science,
art, and self-knowledge.
MAJOR PROPOSITIONS ABOUT DREAMING
PROPOSITION
FREUD
(and often Jung)
1. Dreams are
Irrational or psychotic mental products
BIOLOGISTS
(Crick, Mitchison,
Gazzaniga, Hobson, etc.)
THIS VIEW
(Hartmann)
YES
YES
NO
YES
NO
NO
3. Dreams are “the
royal road” or at least
a good road to the
unconscious
YES
NO
YES
4. Dreams are
disguised — the
product of “censorship”
YES
NO
NO
2. Every dream is a
Fulfillment of a wish
MAJOR PROPOSITIONS ABOUT DREAMING
PROPOSITION
5. Dreams are
essentially a random
pattern of activity.
FREUD
(and often Jung)
BIOLOGISTS
(Crick, Mitchison,
Gazzaniga, Hobson, etc.)
THIS VIEW
(Hartmann)
NO
YES
NO
6. The dream (manifest NO
dream) is often important
without interpretation or
translation
NO
YES
7. Dreams are useful
(functional) even if
forgotten
NO
NO
YES
8. Dreaming is on a
NO
Continuum with waking,
Reverie, daydreaming
NO
YES
9. In dreams begin
responsibilities
NO
YES
NO
Functions of REM sleep
(major theories)
1. REM sleep is necessary for, or at the very least
facilitates, certain kinds of learning (based on
numerous animal and human studies by Hennevin and
Leconte, C. Smith, De Koninck, Stickgold and others,
1960-1998).
2. REM sleep “functions to develop the nervous
system,” especially in the immature animal (Roffwarg,
Muzio, and Demunt, 1966).
3. REM sleep functions in the “repair, reorganization,
and formation of new connections in the cortex…”
(Hartmann, 1973).