Perceptualand MotorSkills, 1991, 73, 1059-1073. O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1991

H O W CAN W E DEFINE THE SEQUENTIAL ORGANIZATION O F DREAMS? ' JACQUES MONTANGERO Universi~of Geneva Summary.-Little is known about the processes of sequential organization of dreams. To conduct experiments aimed at studying how this organization compares with that of waking narrative or day-dreams and whether it is specific to individuals or to phases of sleep, a preliminary analysis must be accomplished. We must be able to d e f i e the sequential organization of reported dreams. The present paper proposes a way to d e f i e this aspect of dreams, using different categories of connection between the successive events represented and a schematic representation of the sequence of events constituting the dream. Such analyses are based on a segmentation of the dream report into units at a semiotic level which does not correspond to the linguistic units of the report. Material collected in an interview on the day following the dream recording helps us to analyze the sequential organization. Examples of the method of definition of this organization are given. An analysis of the example shows that semantic links connect successive scenes of the dream that seem completely discontinuous from a narrative point of view.

Cognitive psychology concerns dreams insofar as their study helps us to understand the processes by which knowledge is organized, for dreaming, as Fodkes (1985) has convincingly argued, consists of a reprocessing of memories or other forms of knowledge. Among the cognitive processes at work in the production of dream representations (Montangero, 1991), there is a group of mechanisms that is particularly interesting because its organizing function is obvious but difficult to define. I refer to the mechanisms that regulate the progression of the dream scenes. Except in the case of young children (Foulkes, 1982), dreams almost never consist of a single, static evocation. O n the contrary, they usually consist of a sequence of representations: actions occut and have effects; points of view and places change; scenarios begin and succeed one another. There cannot, therefore, be dream production without mechanisms that regulate their sequential organization. Even the authors who are the least inclined to consider dreams as a corpus of organized knowledge recognize this fact. Crick and Mitchlson (1986), for example, admit that their theory (according to which dream content is nothing more than overspills of superfluous elements from overloaded neural networks) cannot account for the narrative character of dreams. Several questions arise concerning the sequential organization of

'This text was translated into English by Angela Cornu-Wells. Address correspondence to Dr.J. Montangero, FacultC de Psychologie et des Sciences de ]'Education, University of Geneva, 24, General-Dufour, 1211 Geneva 4.

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dreams. Here are some of them: (1) Is there something specific about the sequential organization of dreams compared to that of waking reports or of day-dreams? (2) Does the type of sequential organization vary from one dreamer to another, from one sleep phase to another, or owing to any other factors? (3) Are dream sequences partially or totally planned? To answer these questions, the following hypotheses can be proposed. (1)The sequential structure of dreams is probably composed of the same elements as those involved in day-dreams or imaginary accounts; however, we would expect the sequential organization of dreams to be characterized by a specific proportion of these elements and a specific type of link between them. (2) The great variety of forms of dream reports that we have obtained up to now in our investigations makes me think that the sequential organization varies a lot in the same person and during the same night. ( 3 ) I t would seem probable that dreams result from the chaining together of a few preplanned elements and of a large number of sequential units activated, step by step, by the representations that are going through the dreamer's mind. These, I repeat, are onIy hypotheses and we should now state them more precisely and try to validate them. But there is a preliminary requirement to this sort of research: we must be able to define the sequential organization of each dream report. Now, t h s preliminary cannot be carried out because there is no ready-made method that would allow us to do so. The grammar of dreams developed by Foulkes (1978) is too complex, and there is too great an assimilation of dreams to a verbal language. The notion of script used by Foulkes (1985) and by Deslauriers and Baylor (1988) accounts for only one aspect of the dream's progression. The same is true for the notion of story schema developed by Mandler and Johnson (1977) and used by Cipolli (1990). Analyses in neuropsychological terms, such as Seligman and Yellen's (1987), are not really operational. Foulkes, Hollifield, Sullivan, Bradley, and Terry (1990) use an interesting "narrative integration scale" borrowed from Peterson and McCabe (1983). This scale accounts for the richness and integrative character of dream reports. I t gives no detail about the type of connection involved. The aim of this article is to propose a method for defining the sequential organization of a dream report. To do so, we must first divide the dream reports into units. My first suggestions deal with this problem. I then propose ways of characterizing the connections between units forming a sequence and between sequences or isolated units. A schematic representation, showing the succession of event units and of the different types of connection proper to a dream, is illustrated by three examples. These analyses of three dream reports will give an idea of the variety of sequential organizations that can be observed. In the conclusions of the paper, some problems related to the sequential organization of dreams are discussed.

DREAMS:SEQUENTIAL ORGANIZATION

Data Collection and Segmentation into Units In general, experimental studies of dreaming are based on accounts given in the night by dreamers who have been awakened during REM sleep. These accounts are called night reports. Now, my research on dreams has convinced me that night reports are neither complete nor precise. This is because a person who has just been awakened is not at his optimal level of cognitive and verbal functioning. I t is therefore necessary to complete the night report by making it more explicit. I n our experiments, we first proceed in the way usually adopted in experimental research on dreams (for example, Foulkes & Schmidt, 1983). The subject is awakened after about 10 minutes of REM sleep and asked to report his dream. At the end of this account, the subject is asked to reconstitute the sequential order of the events (what happened first, what came next, what happened simultaneously). Additional steps must be added, in my opinion, to this usual procedure. O n the day following the dream, the recording of the night report is played back to the subject who is then asked if he wishes to add anything. The analysis of the sequential organization of the dream is done on the basis of the night report, in the order corresponding to the indications given by the subject during the night and completed by additional information given the next day. To analyze breaks in the continuity of the narratives, we also need to obtain information about memories the dreamer may have in connection with the contents represented in the dream, as well as about the general meaning the subject attributes to these contents. This information is obtained on the day after the recording in the sleep laboratory, in response to the following two types of questions: (a) "Did you see, experience, or think about (such and such an element of the dream content) yesterday or before that?" The answers given to these questions constitute what I call the residue of actual experience (RAE, or mnemonic elements). (b) "Can you describe (such and such an element of the dream) in more general terms?" The expression "generic meaning" (GM) will be used to refer to the answers given by the dreamer to this question. For more information about this aspect of the method, see Montangero (1991). The first step, in an analysis of the sequential aspect of dreams, consists of partitioning the dream report into successive units. This is a difficult task, unless purely linguistic criteria are adopted. However, such criteria are not relevant, in my opinion, for two reasons: a dream is not essentially a verbal experience and a single scene of the dream can be described by the dreamer in different ways, from the point of view of language. This is the case for reports collected with my method (including an interview on the following day). Therefore, in our partitioning of the reports, we must take the seman-

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tic aspects of the reports into consideration rather than their formal linguistic characteristics. After making several attempts with Jost Reis at partitioning a number of reports into units, I propose the following criteria. Three levels of units are distinguished. The first level corresponds to "situations," defined by two of the three aspects: place, main activities, main object of concern. Example: "Fiddling with appliances in my girlfriend's apartment," or "Being greeted by my godmother and her sons at a restaurant." The second level differentiates steps in a situation, for example: 1.1. Dreamer fiddles with the answering machine; 1.2. He fears he has deleted some messages; 1.3. He tries to place a small telephone in a hole in the machine; etc. Second example: 1.1. The godmother gets up; 1.2. She comes, smiling, to the dreamer's table and kisses her; 1.3. She says she has two boys. A third level of units is used when a second-level unit is partitioned into several steps. Example: 1.2.1. She comes forward smiling; 1.2.2. She kisses the dreamer. Or: 1.4.1. Her first boy comes; 1.4.2. He says hello; 1.4.3. He leaves. There is good interjudge reliability for the first level of units among the members of our small team, but reliability is questionable when partitioning into units at the second and third levels. For this reason, we now proceed to the segmentation by asking precise questions of the subject who produced the dream report. The remainder of the analysis is then performed by two researchers who first work independently. The same two judges analyze all the reports whose sequential organization is to be compared. As far as the final sequential analysis is concerned, some differences between judges do not matter as long as both judges agree about the existence of the main sequences of units and about their type of connection. For many dreams, it would be artificial to distinguish successive units only because different events sometimes take place simultaneously. In such cases, we locate two units on a same line: 1. Dreamer in a plane observes; 1'. Lost skiers who wander. Or: 1. Dreamer answers the phone; 1'. Her mother lays the table. Types of Connection Between Units Forming a Sequence The aim of the sequential analysis proposed in this paper is to observe whether a dream report comprises sequences or "blocks" of strongly connected units, and what type of connection is involved. Five main types of connection can be distinguished. I list them starting by the loosest sort of connection and ending with the strongest ones. 1. Plausible.-Events in a unit do not stem from the events of the preceding unit but constitute a plausible continuation. Example: I go out of the house; I decide to go to the barber's; I meet an old friend; he tells me he has to do a very unpleasant task.

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2. Narrative.-The sequence comprises a triggering event, a feared or desired outcome, and intermediate steps toward the outcome. Negative feedback (compensation or inverse action) and positive feedback (amplification) can often be observed in narratives. 3. Scripts.-This notion, conceived by Schank and Abelson (19771, refers to the generalizable representation of a fixed sequence of common events, such as the activities and situations that follow one another when we go to a restaurant or take an airplane. The notion of script, like the Piagetian notion of scheme (Piaget, 195211336), refers to a form of knowledge that can be transferred and generalized to other contexts. Deslauriers and Baylor (1988) studied the deviation of dream scripts from the expected sequence. I would like to emphasize the structural nature of the script, which provides a sequence of events that allows the dream to continue. I t is almost impossible to give a precise definition of a particular script: the definitions vary from one person to another and from one context to another (Schank, 1982; Baylor & Deslauriers, 1987). However, it is possible to define, on the basis of a story or of a reported dream, what corresponds to a script in the series of events constituting that dream or story. The events in the successive units form a sequence that is usual either for the dreamer or for almost everybody. Example: flying above mountains and landing on a glacier is a common activity for the dreamer. Getting up and going to say hello to friends or members of the family, when one meets them in a restaurant, is usual behavior in our society. 4. Teleonomic.-The successive events involve a goal or an intention, means, and results. Example: "I had to find a way to open up a secret passage; I pressed a tile and the passage opened before me." 5. Causal.-The successive events have a cause-effect relationship. Causality may be physical (example: "The rubber dinghy hit a stone, sprang a leak, and we fell into the water.") or psychological (link between an event and the reaction of a person). 6. Decomposition.-A sixth type of within-sequence connection, much rarer than the preceding ones, consists of the Decomposition of an action into several steps. Two remarks must be made concerning the five main types of connection. Firstly, usually in dreams, some steps (of a narrative, teleonomic, scriptual, etc. sequence) are missing. Secondly, plausible, causal, and teleonomic links are the most obvious. Scriptual and narrative aspects sometimes appear as a second way of qualifying a sequence. For example, we may qualify a sequence of units as teleonomic, with a narrative (or scriptual) aspect. The connecting macrostructure.-Some dreams or parts of dreams are made up of a succession of connected situations, each of which leads to a certain type of sequence (as described above). We thus have a macrostructure

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(the succession of situations) and embedded microstructures. The macrostructure can take the form of the different types of sequences distinguished here above (plausible, script, etc.). A schema of a macrostructure can be seen in Fig. 1.

FIG. 1. Schema of a connecting macrostructure. Events 1, 2, and 3 constitute the macrostructure, while events a, b, and c are embedded microstructures.

Connections Between Sequences or Isolated Units Once we have distinguished sequences of units (or the absence of such sequences or blocks), we characterize the relationships between sequences or between isolated, punctual events. The connection may pertain to one of the five categories above (plausible being the most common) or there may be no connection. In this case we note a Break. I n some cases an event or activity (usually a displacement) constitutes a Transition between sequences. Sometimes, a connection appears between nonsuccessive units. For example, an object or a character represented in situation 2. (more exactly in 2.2., the situation comprising five units of the second level) appears again in situation 3 . (in the second step of this situation, 3.2.). Schema and Main Sequential Features Once a dream has been partitioned into units, we then make a schema of the sequential organization. I n such schemas, units are noted one under the other (except when two units are simultaneous). When there is a break between two units or sequences of units, the following unit is indented to

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the right. Sequences of units are marked with a brace and characterized (plausible, script, etc.). Connections between units or sequences are marked with an arrow and characterized (plausible, break). Thus in these schemas, the main aspects of the sequential organization of the reported dream appear, on the whole, in a clear and legible way. When a dream report has been analyzed, it can be characterized by its main sequential features: the (more or less high) number of units and of breaks, the (relatively short or long, rare or frequent) sequences of units, and the (dominant or varied) types of connection within the sequence. Some more specific features may occur. Examples are given below.

Examples of Analysis of Sequential Organization Three dreams are now presented to illustrate the method proposed above. The dreams were collected in a sleep laboratory on awakenings after about ten minutes of REM sleep. Each dream was by a different dreamer, and the three dream reports illustrate rather different types of sequential organization.

DREAM1 This report was made by a 25-yr.-old male student in economics (awakening in the second part of the night). The passages in italics belong to the night report, whereas the other passages are clarifications obtained on the following day. The figures correspond respectively to the units and the subunits used in the general schema of the sequential organization of this dream (Fig. 2). 1. I was on the phone with a friend. 2. Then I had gone to a restaurant and had left without paying. 2.1.1. I arrived at the restaurant. 2.1 . I . I ate smera1 ice-creams and other things. 2.1.3. I left without paying. 3.1.1. I went round-or at least I think I did-to my girlfriend's apartment where there was an answering machine like a tape-recorder (it looked like a Nagra, with two big tape spools); there were messages that weren't hers but ones left for other people. I started fiddling with it. 3.1.2. I was afraid I'd deleted the message. 3.2.1. There was a hole beneath the answering machne for a car radio. There was also a portable telephone. I put it into the hole. 3.2.2. It got wedged in there. The answering machine had gone ( I couldn't see it anymore). 3.3. And I felt terribly embarrassed about leaving the restaurant without paying, and I told myself that I would go back and tell them that I hadn't paid. 4. Then I went back there, but the restaurant wasn't a restaurant anymore . . . It was my cousin 'r wedding. 4.1. Everyone was inside and I was walking about. I was in my underwear-or I was naked-I can't remember. There was hardly anyone outside. 4.2. There were two houses; one was covered in ivy, like my grandmother's house. I was between the two houses. I wanted to get into the

J. MONTANGERO

Break

(deviation)

Break S fiddles with answering machine

CAUSAL

S fears he's deleted messages

TELEONOMIC S tits telephone In a hole

S telephone gets wedged

.:: f

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S leels remorse, decides to go and pay

NARRATIVE

S in hospital, talk down

DECOMPOSITION

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.

S (T., child) smiles

Schema of sequential organization of Dream 1 (S = dreamer; -S = other characters)

first house to get changed, but 1 couldn't-it was locked. 4 . 3 . 1 said to myself, alright, then I'll go through the other house. I'll see if someone will open the

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door for me. Then I discovered that there were in fact some people outside. They were a bit hidden. 5 . Afterwards, 1 was in a hospital. I was taking part in some sort of experiment (like the dream-experiment). I was like I am now (with electrodes, etc.). I couldn't get up by myself and I was in the egotists' section. 5.1.1. I was falling to the ground. My arms were tied together and I couldn't get up by myself. 5.1.2. 1 wanted someone to help me up so that I could walk. I kept falling and asking to be helped up. 5.1.3. The guy who helped me up had the face of (Experimenter no. 1) and a Mediterranean look about him (like Experimenter no. 2). 6. In the end, I was able to get up by myself, and then I went down through the lower floors and met lots of friends. 7.1. There was A. who is (who was a classmate of mine when I was an adolescent; he's always been) my enemy. When he blew his nose, blood came out of it (he put his finger on one nostril and blew; a small jet of blood would come out of the other one). He was saying "This is bozo syphilis starts." He was very proud (of this). 7.2. And I said: That's what you get when you don't use condoms, etc." I was talking to him. 8. And then there was T (a childhood friend whom I got on well with); he was in the children's ward. H e was in a doorway, smiling, and was looking at a girlfriend. I n Fig. 2, the sequence units are set out in the way used by Reis (1989). The events that form a narrative continuity are set out verrically in the same column. Any new situation, after a break in continuity, starts in the next column to the right (see Fig. 2). This reported dream is characterized by a large number of situations and the numerous breaks between them. However, by contrast with the breaks between Situations 1 to 5, the last part of the dream has a striking continuity. I n spite of the different characters and types of interaction successively represented in this last part, we observe a unity of place, a transition, and plausible connections. Another striking feature of this reported dream is the diversity of the types of within-sequence connection. Practically all the different categories we have distinguished are represented. In Situation 3, a sequence pattern repetition can be observed (3.1.1. - 3.1.2. and 3.2.1. - 3.2.2.).

DREAM2 This dream was reported by a 23-yr.-old female student in psychology (awakening in the second part of the night). For this dream and the following one, the content is summarized in place of a complete report. 1. Dreamer drives up a mountain road with her father, hears an alarming noise while her father says that there is a strange noise; they stop and see that they have a flat tire. The father says that this is always happening to him. H e decides to change the tire.

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2. Dreamer and her father decide to go to a mountain resort restaurant. Father says they must look for plates; dreamer gets porceIain plates; father says they are not suitabIe, paper plates will do. 3. Dreamer and members of her family sit down at a table in a mountain resort restaurant. A woman (godmother) at another table gets up, goes toward them, and kisses them. She says she has two boys. First boy comes up to their table, greets them, and leaves. Dreamer thinks he is too young. Second boy comes and greets them, then leaves. His head is not visible, as in a badly framed movie picture. 4. Dreamer is outside the restaurant. 5. Dreamer is sitting with a friend, in a room, looking at photographs. Dreamer pins the pictures on the wall. Friend makes a comment about a picture of herself. Suddenly the dreamer sees the real scene, as if she was standing beside the photographer who took the picture. Then dreamer and friend look at a picture of a horse. Again, dreamer sees the real scene and she notices that the photographer had not intended to photograph the horse, but a boy who was standing beside it. Dreamer Iaughs at the photographer's error. This reported dream is characterized by a rather good continuity: there is only one break and many plausible connections between sequences (see Fig. 3). Unexpected representations are included within plausible sequences. The sequences are long. Teleonomic and causal-psychological connections are dominant within sequences. Connections between nonsuccessive units can be observed (between 1.3. and 1.5. and, more strikingly, between 2.1. and 3.1 .). We note a special kind of link between two units (5.3. - 5.4. and 5.5. - 5.6.): the transformation of the spatial-temporal viewpoint, which is probably specific to dream experiences. A repetition of a subsequence pattern occurs in Situation 3 (3.4.1/2/3/ and 3.5.1/2/3). Situations 1.I., 2. I . , and 3.1. constitute a connecting macrostructure (see Fig. 1) while the following subunits of these situations (e.g., 1.2., I.)., 1.4., 1.5.) are embedded microstructures. DREAM3 This dream was reported by a 40-yt-old male researcher in artificial intelligence and economics, after awakening in the second part of the night. The contents of the dream (which were obtained from the night report and from the information given on the following day) can be summarized as follows. 1.1. Dreamer pilots a plane over some mountains and observes 1.1' some skiers who cannot find their way. 1.2. He lands on a glacier and looks at the skiers, thinking that if they knew the solution they would not be lost.

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FIG.3. Schema of the sequential organization of Dream 2 (S =dreamer; -S and -Ss =other characters)

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2.1. In a mountain sports shop owned by a friend, the friend's father accuses his son. 2.2. The son replies, and they argue. 2.3.1. The friend notices that the dreamer is observing them and 2.3.2. closes the door of the shop. 2.4. It is a glazed door; they go on arguing. 2.5. Father and son pretend they are boxing. 2'. In the meantime, dreamer and another friend watch and feel sorry for the son. X. At a certain (indefinite) moment in the dream, the dreamer sees a dental prosthesis. -Ss lost skiers SCRIPT

S&-S look on, regret

t7 2.2.

-5s have an argument

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S sees success

loms in the air comes down (marks)

SITION

Plausible

-S speeds up

1 -S (girl-friend) climbs up the other side

(Impossible to locate in the sequence of situations):

-S prosthesis

FIG.4 . Schema of the sequential organization of Dream 3 (S =dreamer; -S and -Ss =other characters)

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3. Dreamer leaves the shop and walks along the road. 4. H e enters an ice rink to see how a skater succeeds in doing a jump. She succeeds because the dreamer gave her a good solution to her problem. 4'. There are four parts in the skater's jump: she gets up speed, rises i n the air, turns rapidly, then comes down turning on the ice. 5. Dreamer, very satisfied, walks to a teleferic station to go to a restaurant on the top of the mountain. 5'. H e knows that his girlfriend is climbing up the other side and will join him at the top. This dream has a remarkable continuity. The only break (between Situations 1 and 2) is not complete, since both sequences occur on the mountain. The continuity also stems from the presence of a transition. There are three types of within-sequence comections: scriptual (I.), causal-psychological with narrative features (triggering element, amplification) (2.), and action-decomposition (4'.). Two specific features can be observed. Firstly, in almost every scene, there is a simultaneous representation of the dreamer, with his feelings and his knowledge and of other people involved in a different activity. Secondly, the dreamer is unable to locate in the sequence of the dream an isolated representation (Situation X).

Conclusions Although the aim of the three analyses presented in this paper is to illustrate a method and not to test hypotheses, three conclusions can be drawn about the sequential organization of dreams. First of all, the sequential units of the dreams shown in our examples do not correspond to the linguistic units. Our interest lies neither in the linguistic structure of the dream report nor in those characteristics which are specific to a figurative language, but in what Greimas calls a common semiotic level whlch is different from the linguistic level and logically preceding it, whatever the language chosen to express it (Greimas, 1970). This abstract level is similar to those of narrative schemas (Mandler, 1984). Our second conclusion concerns the hfferent types of connection at this common semiotic level: a dream is not necessarily the product of a single iterative form but can involve a series of different sequential structures. In our first example, the various types of connection described in this paper can be observed. Finally, it must be noted that complete breaks in the narrative continuity of the dream can hide a semantic continuity (BoUiger, 1989). In the first dream we analyzed, when two successive situations are separated by a break, memories, or definitions in generic terms related to elements of the first situation are closely linked to elements of the second situation. For example, unit 3.3. (feeling remorse) is defined by the dreamer as "feeling in a shameful situation." Unit 4.1. represents the dreamer half naked, that is, in a

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shameful situation. Or unit 2.1.3. (leaving without paying) reminds the dreamer of a memory related to his girlfriend. Situation 3 . represents the dreamer at his girlfriend's apartment. It is, therefore, important, in my view, to consider together the structurd or "syntactic" side of dreams and their semantic side and not to separate them. As Hunt (1989) states, ". . . semantic points cannot be eliminated in any approach to the structure of dreams . . ." (p. 166). To go back to the principal aim of this article, the different categories of connection set out above and the schematic representation I propose enabIe us to describe the sequential organization of a dream. In this way, we can grasp the specificity of a dream report from its sequential point of view. The relative continuity of the report, the length of the sequences, and the relative frequency of the different types of connection appear clearly in this schema. I t is also possible to see whether the sequential organization corresponds to the repetition of certain structures (which is the case in certain dreams) or to the succession of many different structures. We are now using the method described here to study different problems related to the sequential organization of dreams. To do so, different dream reports and various types of accounts (dream reports, day-dreaming accounts, and waking narratives) given by the same subject are compared. Other experiments involving the comparison of different subjects should also be conducted. Such studies will enable us to address questions related to the use of the different forms of sequential development. Does the form of progression depend on the content of the dream, on the general meanings to which this content refers, or yet again on the place in the dream (beginning or sequel, moments of tension or of relaxation, etc.)? A second series of questions, raised in the introduction, concern the processes at work in the sequential organization of dreams (for example, the presence of planning) and the specificity of the sequential organization of dreams depending on different factors. A rich area of research is thus opened up to specialists in cognitive psychology who are interested in dreams. This research could be closely connected with that on narratives-a field which, according to some psychologists (Britton & Pellegrini, 1990), is important for the study of cognition. REFERENCES BAYLOR,G. W., & DESLAURIERS,D. (1987) Le rhe: sa nature, sa foncfion et une mifhode dhnolyse. Quebec: Presse de I'Universite du Quebec. BOLLIGER, T. (1989) Contribution i ]'etude cognitive et ginitique du rsve. (Un ublished manuscript, Univer. of Geneva, Facult6 de Psychologie et des Sciences de 1'~tucation) BRIT~ON, B. K., & PELLEGRINI, A. D. (Eds.) (1990) Narrative thought and narrative language. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. CIPOLLI,C. (1990) The narrative structure of dreams: linguistic tools of analysis. In J. Horne (Ed.), Sleep '90. Bochum: Pontenagel Press. Pp. 281-284.

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