Modern psychiatry/psychology's neglect of dreaming - psychoanalysis "fault"?

[StephL]

Yupp - I wanted this in science and mathematics, because I talk about the science of dealing with the mind. In especially about professional interventions in cases of mental illness and other conditions, which trouble the mind in ways, that lead sufferers to seek for professional help and guidance. There would be various other places for such a thread to be on topic - but why not here? I find it unfortunate to say the least, that Freudian ideology seems to almost have a monopoly on the topic of dreaming. Dreams are not part of a classical psychiatric discourse, also modern schools of thought in psychotherapy, like CBT, which are otherwise highly insightful - appear to be not interested. I can't help feeling, that this might be at least partly down to people feeling compelled to distance themselves - and clearly - from psychoanalysis with all the ideological ballast that orbits this practice. You don't need to do a free association session a là Freud - you don't need to try to theorize, as to what all that means, and where it comes from. While the former method - the strength of psychoanalysis in my eyes - is useful. Once somebody starts to free associate and around dreams - a spontaneous emergence of understanding from the patient's side alone tends to appear. To theorize, where it all comes from - I do disagree with Freudian analysis in that regard. I even believe, that in the case of dreams being "classical" for Freudian thinking - mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophesy are at work - on different levels. I fail to believe that there is not a much better, ideology-free and also systematic approach to assess the value of making use of dreams in psychotherapy. Dreaming in connection with mental health - in my view - should be newly analysed by scholars, and a fresh picture made of it, which gets extended and enhanced. Research needs to be conducted - there is research being done, I am happy to know - but up to now, I didn't specifically try to follow up on proceedings. Please link us up - or just tell us, what you might have in terms of such resources! Of course LD needed to be included - teaching it is clearly beneficent to troubled minds - at the very least, when it comes to nightmares. I will try to find a study of which I read lately, about there being a significantly higher rate of mental illness in the non-LDing population, compared to LDers. This is amazing - however the background to this will turn out to look!! From a perspective free of preformed schemes and ideology - I could imagine, that a fresh, systematic approach also to dream-interpretation is possible and potentially very useful. What do you think? How would you go about analysing the phenomenon of dreams anew? Do you want to defend psychoanalysis against my negative depiction? Did I miss out on such work already being done, and the fascinating results, you want to tell us about? Over to you! smile.gif

[Soulless]

Let's see if I can word myself appropriately here. To some degree, every field in the field of psychology is lacking, not just dreams. This is because the field is still extremely new and is still sorting itself out, along with how much it may overlap with neuroscience. I find it unfortunate to say the least, that Freudian ideology seems to almost have a monopoly on the topic of dreaming. I would disagree. Milton also is pretty strong, along with most of the other big-name personality-based people. Dreams are not part of a classical psychiatric discourse, also modern schools of thought in psychotherapy, like CBT, which are otherwise highly insightful - appear to be not interested. I would, again, like to question. Many psychotherapies depend on a therapist's relationship with the patient. It should go to show that when it comes to dreams, if the dreams are not significant to the patient they shouldn't appear significant to the therapist. There are many emerging methods of therapy that base on a strong relationship with a patient and understanding of how the patient can see things. Once somebody starts to free associate and around dreams - a spontaneous emergence of understanding from the patient's side alone tends to appear. I would again question the significance of dreams as a universal tool to access the mental map of a patient. While I also believe that an understanding of a patient's associations is an important view into a patient's perspective, I don't believe that dreams can be used as significantly as can be implied here. To the majority of adults, dreams may be largely insignificant- if they even remember them. I would think that the importance of dreams should only apply to patients who themselves believe there is an importance in dreams. I will try to find a study of which I read lately, about there being a significantly higher rate of mental illness in the non-LDing population, compared to LDers. I would like to read this study, for I find this somewhat questionable that there is a "significant" difference between the two. How large of a study are we talking? What population are we working on? How do they determine mental illness population? How would you go about analysing the phenomenon of dreams anew? I think there is excellent opportunity, but I feel that it must be taken in context to the greater field and influences on people. Dreams, in my opinion, can mostly be an interesting reflection of a patient, but only in specific cases in which dreams are actually significant to a patient.

[Abra]

In any case, a biologically-viable evolution-driven explanation for why dreams occur (not only in mammals, but birds independently) and do not occur (in, say, dolphins) should hold firm footing before an attempt to explore studies of the potential therapeutic effects of dream analysis. If the horse comes before the cart, it'll end up as the same pseudoscience, but unfortunately with less phallus.

[dutchraptor]

I think that dream analysis does hold merit, well it should since dreams are essentially a subconscious playground. On that same note, it's also nigh impossible to accurately analysis a dream. How do you differentiate between two different dreams that display the same emotion, or event? How could you understand the motivations of the person in their dream? They are shrouded in ambiguity, even to the dreamer themselves. Dreams obviously hold a wealth of information, but the truly hard part is to analyze it. I don't think there is any standard way to analyze a dream, at least not before understanding the brain a bit more. Another major problem I see with current dream analysis is that dreams don't really reflect a person true behavior. How many times have you done or said something in a dream that you would never do in real life? To go along with that, we should understand the mechanics behind dreams fully before we can utilize any dream analysis. If we knew exactly how our personality is affected by a dream, then we could reasonably make some conclusions based on our actions in them.

[StephL]

Let's see if I can word myself appropriately here. To some degree, every field in the field of psychology is lacking, not just dreams. This is because the field is still extremely new and is still sorting itself out, along with how much it may overlap with neuroscience. I would disagree. Milton also is pretty strong, along with most of the other big-name personality-based people. I would, again, like to question. Many psychotherapies depend on a therapist's relationship with the patient. It should go to show that when it comes to dreams, if the dreams are not significant to the patient they shouldn't appear significant to the therapist. There are many emerging methods of therapy that base on a strong relationship with a patient and understanding of how the patient can see things. I would again question the significance of dreams as a universal tool to access the mental map of a patient. While I also believe that an understanding of a patient's associations is an important view into a patient's perspective, I don't believe that dreams can be used as significantly as can be implied here. To the majority of adults, dreams may be largely insignificant- if they even remember them. I would think that the importance of dreams should only apply to patients who themselves believe there is an importance in dreams. I would like to read this study, for I find this somewhat questionable that there is a "significant" difference between the two. How large of a study are we talking? What population are we working on? How do they determine mental illness population? I think there is excellent opportunity, but I feel that it must be taken in context to the greater field and influences on people. Dreams, in my opinion, can mostly be an interesting reflection of a patient, but only in specific cases in which dreams are actually significant to a patient. I'll look into what Milton got to say - his theories escaped my notice completely. You actually sort of convinced me - digging into dreams, which are not even mentioned by patients, is probably not something universally helpful. Or insightful to a degree that justifies the effort of having a specific patient explore her dreams, on the chance that something useful might in the end be reported, which would not otherwise have surfaced anyway. I just wonder, if there are even data, where patients try to follow their dreams, journal them, like we do, really actively try to find out, what exactly they spend their nights with. If not some sort of patterns could be found, if looked for systematically. Did Freud deal with bipolar or schizophrenics' dreams and record his ideas for such cases? If I take myself - dreams were not significant at all in my life lately - because I didn't even remember them. But now after some months of finding out, what I dream - I can't help to see, that some of them are strong pointers towards certain problematic areas of my mind. As a person, who considers herself to be fairly healthy mentally and fairly aware of my troubles and tribulations - I believe I gathered some additional insight anyway. Not that I think, I found something completely new and unexpected - but surprised I often was - esp. about how much things long past do still ruminate about in my head at night. Not the stuff I journal here of course. So - it was more on that basis, that I thought, everybody could profit - just from personal insight alone - if they followed their dreams consciously. Then there is my personal fascination of LD and said "mythical study". To be honest though - where I believe I know quite a bit - that's neuroscience - and as you say - I hope, the psycho-field and neuroscience will find to each other and the field will become a bit more grounded, maybe even come together from different camps. This study - yeah. I have to write a mail to the TV channel Arté - they brought a documentary on LD in January, where they mentioned it - and they do again only mention it on their web-site in connection with that docu. I looked, what I got up again - and no "significantly" - must have dreamed that - what they say is this: Laut einer Studie sind Klarträumer psychisch gesünder als ihre nicht-klarträumenden Zeitgenossen. "According to a study, LDers are mentally more healthy than their non-LDing contemporaries." On the other hand - if it wasn't significant - it wouldn't be a result of it, or would it? This docu was done with participation of a German sports psychologist, MelSchaedlich - she also talked and presented in it - and might even have written this sentence. She has an account on here, which she only very rarely uses - I'll write her a pm. Thank you for this very insightful post - I came a bit down to earth from my dreams of a fresh approach to dreaming being of importance in the mental health department. Should I come to find this study and it holds at least partly what it promises - my next over-enthusiastic idea would be teaching it at school.. In any case, a biologically-viable evolution-driven explanation for why dreams occur (not only in mammals, but birds independently) and do not occur (in, say, dolphins) should hold firm footing before an attempt to explore studies of the potential therapeutic effects of dream analysis. If the horse comes before the cart, it'll end up as the same pseudoscience, but unfortunately with less phallus. Yeah - neuroscience should hurry right up and produce a body of knowledge to base such attempts on - that's true. I can see what you mean - how avoid getting up new schemes and preconceptions when faced with such an intricate phenomenon to systematize. I think that dream analysis does hold merit, well it should since dreams are essentially a subconscious playground. On that same note, it's also nigh impossible to accurately analysis a dream. How do you differentiate between two different dreams that display the same emotion, or event? How could you understand the motivations of the person in their dream? They are shrouded in ambiguity, even to the dreamer themselves. Dreams obviously hold a wealth of information, but the truly hard part is to analyze it. I don't think there is any standard way to analyze a dream, at least not before understanding the brain a bit more. Another major problem I see with current dream analysis is that dreams don't really reflect a person true behavior. How many times have you done or said something in a dream that you would never do in real life? To go along with that, we should understand the mechanics behind dreams fully before we can utilize any dream analysis. If we knew exactly how our personality is affected by a dream, then we could reasonably make some conclusions based on our actions in them. Yeah - same conclusion - we need to understand more basic things first, before we embark on such a project and expect to come up with something more substantial, than we already have. Would you think, it is generally beneficent for any person - healthy or not - to delve more into remembering and recapitulating dreams? In the sense, that insight can be found into certain problematic corners of one's mind, which could be useful for stabs at self-help? Or just gaining a better awareness, of "who one is"? I know - this is now asked so generally - a yes seems like the default answer, but the significance or extent to which such insight would actually be useful is another question.

[Goldenspark]

In any case, a biologically-viable evolution-driven explanation for why dreams occur (not only in mammals, but birds independently) and do not occur (in, say, dolphins) Is that right? I thought that tere had been some evidence to suggest Dolphins did, or might, dream? In any case, I don't think we have to have explained dreams to be able to use them. Scientific method can be used to test the efficacy of any dream-based treatments, without fully understanding what they are for.

[StephL]

Is that right? I thought that tere had been some evidence to suggest Dolphins did, or might, dream? In any case, I don't think we have to have explained dreams to be able to use them. Scientific method can be used to test the efficacy of any dream-based treatments, without fully understanding what they are for. You are right. If we always needed to wait for fundamental explanations - we couldn't have found out anything. Hm - interesting - usually I'm not so much swaying back and forth with my own views like in this thread. I'll see, if I can finally make up my mind about the topic! wink.gif I followed up the dolphins. Aquatic mammals have a special sleeping pattern - as adaptation to going back into the water it seems: Aquatic-Mammalian Sleep Aquatic mammals had to develop drastically different sleeping methods from land mammals. Like birds, water-mammals sleep uni-hemispehrically. Like other uni-hemisphere sleepers, dolphins "rest" with one eye opened, one closed. Dolphins, whales, and seals keep one hemisphere of the brain awake and aware of the environment. Seals, able to leave the water and spend lengths of time sun-bathing, have almost no REM-sleep when in the water but on land have REM-periods resembling land mammals – surprisingly with no REM-rebound for recovery purposes after all that REM-sleep-deprivation. Except for one exception (a single 1969 study reported a pilot whale was in REM for 6-minutes), it seems that whales and dolphins do not have REM-sleep. Even when measured continuously for 4-weeks, bottlenose dolphins showed no clear evidence of REM. This makes sense*: If REM-sleep causes muscle-atonia and prevents the body from moving around, how would an animal keep swimming? May be that REM-Sleep is just very hard to detect in cetaceans. It was believed for a long time that monotremes – like the platypus and echidna – did not go through cycles of REM. Turned out that even though these guys don't exhibit EEG changes characteristic of REM-sleep, wave-bursts thought to underlie REM do occur in their brain-stems; in fact, the platypus has more of this REM-related activity than any other mammal. Could be that dolphins and whales go through REM periods too, and we haven't been looking in the right places. *also they need to periodically come up for air and keep an eye out for potential predators Platypus with EEG - marvellous to picture - loving these guys!! All of this centres on REM sleep - and it is not even so, that dreams and REM sleep are synonymous. Patients with brain injuries in the brain-stem area pons do dream, but show no REM phases. While there are other regions in the frontal cortex, which when impaired disable the person to dream - but when their pons is intact, they still undergo REM cycles**. Since you can't ask dolphins - it might well be that they dream without REM connected to it. But then there is this the question of consciousness - as I understood another article as well - dolphins seem to literally always be aware of their environment. Maybe they really don't dream, because that would involve a splitting of consciousness. Very interesting, surely - but a mystery that should not hinder us progressing! I could imagine, that as lucid dreamers, we have a possibility to watch our "dream-machine" at work consciously, and are probably able to gain insights into the general mechanisms of dreaming in a unique way? **source: science.education.nih.gov

[dutchraptor]

Would you think, it is generally beneficent for any person - healthy or not - to delve more into remembering and recapitulating dreams? In the sense, that insight can be found into certain problematic corners of one's mind, which could be useful for stabs at self-help? Or just gaining a better awareness, of "who one is"? I actually do think so, as long as people don't get carried away with trying to find "meaning". Dreams present a situation in which logical mental processes are inhibited, as such they should be able to give us a reasonable image of what we would do if we relied purely on habit and emotion. We also have a sort of disconnected sense with the person you are in the dream, thus one might be able to view there position in a more objective manner. If someone is willing to accept that they might be clouding their own judgement by trying to excuse themselves, they might find that in a dream they exhibit a behavior that is closer to reality than they could hypothesize while awake. The most powerful example I can think of would be if you are trying to find what irritates you about someone else, then a dream you might have an experience with said person and you could witness from an outside perspective how you acted around them on a more emotional basis. At that same note though, these effects can all be achieved through meditation and logical thinking. There are entire schools of meditation built upon the principles of understanding your personality as objectively as possible (vippissanna meditation has some of this in it, I believe). It's actually quite wonderful how well you can control your actions by logically analyzing your irrational or selfish thought processes. So all in all I'd say that while dream analysis might hold some merit, it would not be the preferred tool.

[StephL]

In the meantime - I found this: New Links Between Lucid Dreaming And Psychosis Could Revive Dream Therapy In Psychiatry -- ScienceDaily Funnily it is worded a bit along my initial, bit impulsively chosen thread title. Unfortunately, I have no way of informing myself about which specific physiological similarities between psychosis and LD they are speaking here. So I keep up a bit of scepticism - could on the other hand well imagine a familiarity in the underlying processes. There's otherwise not exactly a wealth of information to draw on - I still hope for that other study to surface - I only wrote to Mel today - so that probably takes a while. I'm not exactly convinced by this thread - but hey - I found something which belongs here - so there..tongue.gif Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that the previously discredited technique of dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment, according to a European Science Foundation workgroup. People suffering from nightmares can sometimes be treated by training them to dream lucidly so they can consciously wake up. Similarities in brain activity during lucid dreaming and psychosis suggest that dream therapy may be useful in psychiatric treatment, a European Science Foundation (ESF) workshop has found. This is strengthened by the potential evolutionary relationship between dreams and psychosis. Lucid dreaming – when you are aware you are dreaming – is a hybrid state between sleeping and being awake. It creates distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain that have similarities to the patterns made by psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia. Confirming links between lucid dreaming and psychotic conditions offers potential for new therapeutic routes based on how healthy dreaming differs from the unstable states associated with neurological and psychiatric disorders. New data affirms the connection by showing that while dreaming lucidly the brain is in a dissociated state, according to Ursula Voss from the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Dissociation involves losing conscious control over mental processes, such as logical thinking or emotional reaction. In some psychiatric conditions this state is also known to occur while people are awake. "In the field of psychiatry, the interest in patients' dreams has progressively fallen out of both clinical practice and research. But this new work seems to show that we may be able to make comparisons between lucid dreaming and some psychiatric conditions that involve an abnormal dissociation of consciousness while awake, such as psychosis, depersonalisation and pseudoseizures." said the workshop's convenor Silvio Scarone, from the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy. Meanwhile, the previously discredited idea of treating some conditions with dream therapy has attracted interest from clinicians. An example is people suffering from nightmares can sometimes be treated by training them to dream lucidly so they can consciously wake up. "On the one hand, basic dream researchers could now apply their knowledge to psychiatric patients with the aim of building a useful tool for psychiatry, reviving interest in patients' dreams," continues Scarone. "On the other hand, neuroscience investigators could explore how to extend their work to psychiatric conditions, using approaches from sleep research to interpret data from acute psychotic and dissociated states of the brain-mind." The existence of such psychotic conditions may be rooted in the evolutionary role of dreams, where dreaming is thought to have emerged to enable early humans to rehearse responses to the many dangerous events they faced in real life. Developed by Antti Revonsuo at University of Turku in Finland, if this threat simulation theory is correct it may have origins even further back in evolution, given that other mammals such as dogs also exhibit the characteristic electrical activity of dreaming. Researchers also looked at the idea that paranoid delusions and other hallucinatory phenomena occur when the dissociative dreaming state involving replay of threatening situations is carried through into wakefulness. "Exposure to real threatening events supposedly activates the dream system, so that it produces simulations that are realistic rehearsals of threatening events in terms of perception and behaviour," said Scarone. "This theory works on the basis that the environment in which the human brain evolved included frequent dangerous events that posed threats to human reproduction. These would have been a serious selection pressure on ancestral human populations and would have fully activated the threat simulation mechanisms." However, dreaming is unlikely to have evolved purely to recreate threats. It may also have a role in the learning process, according to Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and dream researcher recently retired from Harvard University in the US. Contents are added while you are awake and integrated with the automatic program of dream consciousness during sleep. This works with observations that daytime learning is consolidated by night-time sleeping, leading to the phenomenon where people remember facts better the day after they have learnt them than at the time. What seems to be pretty much clear is an increased frequency of nightmares in adults with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Looking about, what I could find also from from afflicted persons directly reported - that's a symptom people suffer from. If just for that - could really improve people's sleeping behaviour, which is esp. important in mood disorders. And then there's that little pet hypothesis, which came to my and more people's minds, that learning to discern the dream-state could help with dealing with daytime delusions and hallucinations. Dutchraptor, you've been in that thread as well - remember?

[dutchraptor]

I believe I do remember, though very faintly. I'd have to read the thread to recognize it.

[StephL]

Somebody - vBoyJunior? was worried if RCing might lead to psychosis - and after allaying his worries - we came round to discussing, how LDing would influence a person with a diagnosis of for example schizophrenia. First of all - it needed to be established, that having schizophrenia doesn't mean, you are constantly psychotic with full special effects - comes in phases with remissions - or can be suppressed with drugs. So there's nothing basically hindering an undisturbed learning process to acquire the skill. After reading this assertion, that psychosis shares aspects, neurophysiological aspects, with LDing in that paper - maybe it's even easier to learn, if you're wired in a more dissociated way to begin with. There are commonalities, if looked at superficially at least. Hallucinations, obviously, but in esp. normal dreams we are also prone to delusional thinking and experiencing "facts" with an a priori justification, without questioning them critically, meaning can also sort of free-float and attach to the strangest things. Our self-model and subjective agency are often dissociated in dreams as well. So if you pose, that dream-mechanisms overlay reality and your waking self in psychosis - LD could mean that your waking self model/notion overlays the dream. So that might be, why it looks similar from external. I wish I knew at least which sort of data they talk about - EEG? fMRI?

[Abra]

Somebody - vBoyJunior? was worried if RCing might lead to psychosis - and after allaying his worries - we came round to discussing, how LDing would influence a person with a diagnosis of for example schizophrenia. First of all - it needed to be established, that having schizophrenia doesn't mean, you are constantly psychotic with full special effects - comes in phases with remissions - or can be suppressed with drugs. So there's nothing basically hindering an undisturbed learning process to acquire the skill. After reading this assertion, that psychosis shares aspects, neurophysiological aspects, with LDing in that paper - maybe it's even easier to learn, if you're wired in a more dissociated way to begin with. There are commonalities, if looked at superficially at least. Hallucinations, obviously, but in esp. normal dreams we are also prone to delusional thinking and experiencing "facts" with an a priori justification, without questioning them critically, meaning can also sort of free-float and attach to the strangest things. Our self-model and subjective agency are often dissociated in dreams as well. So if you pose, that dream-mechanisms overlay reality and your waking self in psychosis - LD could mean that your waking self model/notion overlays the dream. So that might be, why it looks similar from external. I wish I knew at least which sort of data they talk about - EEG? fMRI? I have bipolar with psychoses (about 10 days each year, luckily only 6 this year). I learned how to lucid dream to the point where every third dream was a DILD, and still is, prior to my first episode. I have always thought that my flavor of bipolar is connected to REM, for the reason that a psychotic break has only occurred (but not always) following several consecutive days with no REM sleep. I think that lucid dreaming helps me stay rational. I've had friends with disorders who have thought that in waking life, they are dreaming. I always use the nose-check, since that connects to the dreamer's actual body. But basically, it helps me critically think in a more balanced way. In waking life, I take things that don't make sense and figure out a rational explanation for it. In dreams, I take things that don't make sense and figure out a rational explanation for it. A la Dirk Gently, sometimes so many coincidences occur that the less "rational" explanation is more probable, in which case I figure that I'm just having a ridiculous dream, and reality check. The key to preventing problems with psychoses is to continually up the ante for what qualifies as "dream." I've had really fucking banal dreams before. Eventually, someone will say something that they shouldn't know and/or care about, and then I might think to myself 'hold up. Where was I before we started going to 7-11?' and realize that the last thing I remember doing was sleeping. That's even more safer than the nose-check for me at this point. During my last episode, I thought I was in an eternal nightmare. I was already in the ward, which sets off all sorts of PTSD bells. I could not fathom why they refused to give me a phone or let me leave my (locked) room. That one goddamned evil night nurse. I had no intent or action that I was hurting myself or others, save for the threat that I'd bang my head against the wall if they put me in seclusion, and that I was wearing a lighter coat than normal during a winter walk. I ended up smearing blood on the walls until I wrote "Let me out please" using a wound that the staff created by literally dragging me into said seclusion room. And the main reason they put me in that room was because I silently refused to move from a couch into a bed. Anyway, I kept reality checking, but I figured since I was already hallucinating, I couldn't even trust that. And most of the time I'm "psychotic," I'm not actually psychotic. Maybe every hour or so I'll fall into a delusion, but within another hour I shake it off. I train myself out of delusions to practice for the next episode. In other words, I think of something silly or follow a stupid train of thought for a while, and then I think of all the reasons why the way I thought things were wasn't actually the way things are, and find evidence which allows me to posit a more reasonable explanation. For instance, during one episode I thought I could control the weather, so I tested this by writing down what I wanted the weather to change to within the hour. It didn't change at all, and I was very relieved rather than disappointed. I love being proven wrong when I'm having delusions, and so do my delusory friends. It's a comfort. I just wish my family, certain friends, and certain therapists would get with the program (instead of saying "sure" when I say strange things and then chewing the fat about them with friends behind my back). Yay long sidetracking post.

[StephL]

Thank you for your take on it, Abra! smile.gif That was my intuition on it as well - that the default-mindset of questioning reality, and being acquainted with altered states of consciousness like in LDs could help with figuring out, what is delusion, and what is not. Wishing you peace of mind!