INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN ORIENTING ACTIVITY MEDIATE FEELING REALIZATION IN DREAMS .1. EVIDENCE FROM RETROSPECTIVE REPORTS OF MOVEMENT INHIBITION

Existential dreams, which involve ineffectuality, sadness, and separat ion (Kuiken di Sikora, 1993), frequently provide shifts in feeling tha t sensitize dreamers to aspects of their lives they have previously ig nored. To better understand that phenomenon, we examined whether indiv idual differences in movement inhibition during the orienting response (either while awake or dreaming) would predict: (a) the enactment of dreams during awakening, (b) a lingering sense of the reality of dream events, and (c) dream-induced self-perceptual depth. Three studies us ing retrospective questionnaires and one using dream diaries provided consistent evidence of these relationships. Also individual difference s in movement inhibition and in the preceding dream effects were consi stently associated with absorption (Tellegen, 1982), a personality dim ension related to openness to experience. Finally, results from one st udy confirmed that dream-induced self-perceptual depth is more closely associated with the occurrence of existential dreams, than with eithe r anxiety dreams (nightmares) or transcendent (archetypal) dreams.