Observations on the Effects of Anxiety and Anger on the Content of Concurrent Dreams

Abstract

The effects of affects (anxiety, anger) on the content of concurrently ongoing dreams have been studied in 10 college students. Dreams were defined as mental products in which everything (including thoughts) is expressed by means of visual imagery. Anxiety or anger were generated by posthypnotic suggestions. The Ss professed total amnesia for the posthypnotic suggestions. The presence of suggested anxiety or anger concurred with changes of the galvanic skin resistance, the blood pressure, the heart rate, and the free fatty acid content of blood plasma. Analysis of the reported dream contents suggests that the dream content may be altered through endogenous affects that concur with the process of dreaming. Mild or moderate anxiety or anger without a specific content may promote retrieval of old memory traces and incorporation of these memory traces into the dream content. Intensive anxiety (or rage) may result in dreamwork designed to cope with this intensive emotion. This may interfere with the engramming of last day's residue.