Steinig Jana, Bazan Ariane, Happe Svenja, Antonetti Sarah, Shevrin Howard
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Institute of Psychology and Cognition Research, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 20;8:1955. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01955. eCollection 2017.
Primary and secondary processes are the foundational axes of the Freudian mental apparatus: one horizontally as a tendency to associate, the primary process, and one vertically as the ability for perspective taking, the secondary process. Primary process mentation is not only supposed to be dominant in the unconscious but also, for example, in dreams. The present study tests the hypothesis that the mental activity during REM-sleep has more characteristics of the primary process, while during non-REM-sleep more secondary process operations take place. Because the solving of a rebus requires the ability to non-contexually condensate the literal reading of single stimuli into a new one, rebus solving is a primary process operation by excellence. In a replication of the dream-rebus study of Shevrin and Fisher (1967), a rebus, which consisted of an image of a comb (German: "Kamm") and an image of a raft (German: "Floß"), resulting in the German rebus word "kampflos" (Engl.: without a struggle), was flashed subliminally (at 1 ms) to 20 participants before going to sleep. Upon consecutive awakenings participants were asked for a dream report, free associations and an image description. Based on objective association norms, there were significantly more conceptual associations referring to and indexing secondary process mentation when subjects were awakened from non-REM sleep as compared to REM-awakenings. There were not significantly more rebus associations referring to indexing primary process mentation when awakened from REM-sleep as compared to non-REM awakenings. However, when the associations were scored on the basis of each subject's individual norms, there was a rebus effect with more idiosyncratic rebus associations in awakenings after REM than after non-REM-sleep. Our results support the general idea that REM-sleep is characterized by primary process thinking, while non-REM-sleep mentation follows the rules of the secondary process.
一条水平轴线代表联想倾向，即原发性过程；一条垂直轴线代表换位思考能力，即继发性过程。原发性过程思维不仅被认为在无意识状态中占主导，例如在梦境中也是如此。本研究检验了这样一个假设：快速眼动睡眠期间的心理活动具有更多原发性过程的特征，而非快速眼动睡眠期间则更多地发生继发性过程操作。由于解决画谜需要将单个刺激的字面含义非情境性地浓缩成一个新含义的能力，所以画谜解决是典型的原发性过程操作。在对谢夫林和费舍尔（1967年）的梦境画谜研究进行的一项重复实验中，一个由梳子的图像（德语：“Kamm”）和木筏的图像（德语：“Floß”）组成的画谜，其谜底是德语单词“kampflos”（英语：without a struggle，意为“毫不费力”），在20名参与者睡觉前以阈下方式（1毫秒）闪现。在连续醒来时，要求参与者进行梦境报告、自由联想和图像描述。根据客观联想规范，与从快速眼动睡眠中唤醒相比，当受试者从非快速眼动睡眠中唤醒时，有更多涉及继发性过程思维并进行索引的概念性联想。与从非快速眼动睡眠中唤醒相比，从快速眼动睡眠中唤醒时，涉及原发性过程思维并进行索引的画谜联想并没有显著增多。然而，当根据每个受试者的个体规范对联想进行评分时，在快速眼动睡眠后的唤醒中，画谜效应表现为具有更多独特的画谜联想，而非快速眼动睡眠后则不然。我们的研究结果支持了这样一个总体观点，即快速眼动睡眠的特征是原发性过程思维，而非快速眼动睡眠思维则遵循继发性过程的规则。
