Regarding affects and imagery in dreams

Abstract

Focussing on the affects experienced in 118 dreams, the author puts forward a general principle of orneiric replay of secondary feelings that are real and barely mentalized. This could be a feeling of anxiety experienced in a dream when the “real” anxiousness it replays, that was provoked by a primary psychological “event”, resides in the background. An example of this is the barely anxious feeling that may surface when one is on the way to being devastated by a tormenting memory. The highly mentalized cognitive-affective stimulus (the tormenting memory) is symbolized by the oneiric image (such as a vicious dog).

This exploratory study corroborates the theory put forward by Hartmann (2001) in which the image of a dream seems to picture the emotion of the dreamer.