Department of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
Int Rev Neurobiol. 2010;92:197-214. doi: 10.1016/S0074-7742(10)92010-2.
There is a widespread consensus that emotion is important in dreams, deriving from both biological and psychological studies. However, the emphasis on examining emotions explicitly mentioned in dreams is misplaced. The dream is basically made of imagery. The focus of our group has been on relating the dream imagery to the dreamer's underlying emotion. What is most important is the underlying emotion--the emotion of the dreamer, not the emotion in the dream. This chapter discusses many studies relating the dream-especially the central image of the dream--to the dreamer's underlying emotion. Focusing on the underlying emotion leads to a coherent and testable view of the nature of dreaming. It also helps to clarify some important puzzling features of the literature on dreams, such as why the clinical literature is different in so many ways from the experimental literature, especially the laboratory-based experimental literature. Based on central image intensity and the associated underlying emotion, we can identify a hierarchy of dreams, from the highest-intensity, "big dreams," to the lowest-intensity dreams from laboratory awakenings.
人们普遍认为情绪在梦境中很重要，这既来自于生物学研究，也来自于心理学研究。然而，强调对梦境中明确提到的情绪进行检查是错误的。梦基本上是由意象构成的。我们小组的重点一直是将梦境意象与梦者潜在的情绪联系起来。最重要的是潜在的情绪——梦者的情绪，而不是梦中的情绪。本章讨论了许多将梦——尤其是梦的中心意象——与梦者潜在情绪联系起来的研究。关注潜在情绪可以使我们对做梦的本质形成一个连贯和可检验的观点。它还有助于澄清有关梦境文献的一些重要的令人困惑的特征，例如为什么临床文献在如此多的方面与实验文献不同，特别是基于实验室的实验文献。基于中心意象的强度和相关的潜在情绪，我们可以确定一个梦的层次结构，从强度最高的“大梦”到实验室唤醒时强度最低的梦。
