The lack of thematic continuity in dreams with scene and plot discontinuities.

Robert Stickgold, Funke Sangodeyi
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Abstract

A central tenet of Freudian dream theory holds that there is thematic coherence within all dreams, even those containing scene and plot discontinuities. While other models support varying degrees of dream coherence, none address the question of how, or even whether, coherence can be identified in dreams with such discontinuities. Here, we objectively test the ability of judges to evaluate the coherence of individual dream narratives. Twenty reports with complete scene and plot discontinuities were collected, and half were cut apart at their discontinuities and their two halves spliced together with segments from dreams of other subjects. The remaining 10 reports were left intact. Judges correctly identified reports as intact or spliced only 57% of the time, a rate only slightly better than chance. Only 3 of the 20 reports, one intact and two spliced, were reliably scored correctly, while one intact report was mis-scored by 80% of the judges. Judges had no greater confidence in correct decisions than incorrect ones. Dream report features identified by the judges that were effectively used in scoring dreams included characters, locations and objects, while psychoanalytic content and writing style were least effectively used. In sum, we find no evidence that dream construction consistently results in identifiable thematic coherence. Rather, scene and plot discontinuities in many cases represent such complete breaks as to be unrecognizable. We conclude that the finding of continuity by those reading these reports reflects ineluctable synthetic activity in the mind of the dream researcher or analyst rather than in the mind of the dreamer. This paper is part of the Festschrift in honor of Dr. Robert Stickgold.

梦境缺乏主题连续性,场景和情节不连贯。
弗洛伊德梦理论的一个核心原则认为,所有的梦都有主题连贯性,即使是那些包含场景和情节不连续性的梦。虽然其他模型支持不同程度的梦的连贯性,但没有一个解决如何,甚至是否,连贯性可以在具有这种不连续性的梦中被识别的问题。在这里,我们客观地测试了法官评估个人梦境叙述的连贯性的能力。收集了20份完整的场景和情节不连续的报告,其中一半在他们的不连续处被切断,两半与其他受试者的梦片段拼接在一起。其余10份报告完好无损。法官正确识别完整或拼接报告的几率仅为57%,仅略高于偶然性。在这20份报告中,只有3份(1份完整报告和2份拼接报告)被可靠地正确打分,而一份完整报告被80%的评委误判。法官对正确判决的信心并不比错误判决的信心大。评委们认为,梦报告的特征包括人物、地点和物体,而精神分析的内容和写作风格被用来给梦打分的效率最低。总之,我们没有发现任何证据表明梦的建构始终导致可识别的主题连贯性。更确切地说,场景和情节的不连续性在许多情况下代表着无法辨认的完全中断。我们的结论是,阅读这些报告的人发现的连续性反映了梦研究者或分析者头脑中不可避免的综合活动,而不是梦者的头脑。这篇论文是纪念罗伯特·斯蒂克戈尔德博士的纪念活动的一部分。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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