NIGHTMARES, DREAMS, AND SCHIZOTYPY

The theory that psychosis and dreaming share some common underlying me chanism finds support in the observation that chronic nightmare suffer ers are at increased risk for psychopathology. We examined this connec tion in a large general population sample, administering a battery of psychosis proneness and other personality scales, together with a nigh tmare distress scale; participants also answered a single question on pleasurable mood associated with dreaming. In addition, they completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory, to reinvestigate previously observed gend er differences in nightmare susceptibility. It was found that, among t he psychosis proneness scales, the best predictor of nightmare distres s was STA, a mostly cognitive measure of schizotypy; this was true eve n after allowing for a strong influence in the data of general neuroti cism. Other aspects of psychosis proneness-e.g. anhedonia-were unrelat ed to nightmares. However, sex and sex role differences did make a sig nificant contribution, self-confessed feminine females and masculine m ales reporting, respectively, the highest and lowest nightmare distres s. For schizotypy it was further shown that relationships were not con fined to the nightmare experience; high (STA) schizotypes also signifi cantly more often reported enjoyable dreaming. It was concluded that a unifying theme explaining the data is the schizotype's greater imagin ativeness, which can have both positive and negative expression in sle ep and consciousness.