Exploring emotional characteristics in dreams of clinical populations within Japanese psychotherapy

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the emotional characteristics of dreams documented in Japanese psychotherapy case studies. A total of 423 dreams were extracted from 26 cases that fit the criteria of the clinical population and emotions were analyzed using objective ratings. The findings indicated that of all the emotions rated, positive emotions accounted for 16.5%, while negative emotions constituted 76.9% of the reported dreams. Among individual negative emotions, fear, disgust, and anger were the most prevalent (38.5%, 15.4%, and 14.3%, respectively). No significant gender differences were observed. Among age groups, adolescents experienced overall emotions, negative emotions and emotions of fear more frequently in dreams than adults. These findings support the dream emotional continuity hypothesis and the theory of emotional processing in dreams. This study is a significant contribution to the understanding of dream emotions reported in psychotherapy.