Extended Essay

Psychology

Research Question: How is the emotion of fear manifested in

our dreams?

Session: May 2018

Word Count: 3706

1
Contents:

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………… 3
2. Theories on dreams……………………………………………………………… 6
 Freud’s Dream Theory……………………………………………………6
 The Activation Synthesis Model………………………………………… 7
 Continual-Activation Theory……………………………………………. 8
 Reverse Learning theory………………………………………………… 8
 Gayle Delaney’s Theory………………………………………………… 9
 The expectation fulfilment theory …………………………………….... 9
 The contemporary theory………………………………………………... 10
 Emotional Selection Theory…………………………………………….. 10
 James-Lange Theory of Emotion………………………………………. 11
 Extended Parallel Processing Model………………………………….... 11
3. Analysis………………………………………………………………………… 12
4. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………… 16
5. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………. 18

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Introduction:

Dreams hold a different meaning in each individual’s life. For some it might seem as a sign,

for some they might just be normal visions while they’re sleeping and for some, they hardly

remember getting dreams. In today’s world, people have a tendency to interpret whatever

they see, even as a vision and that is why we start overthinking about our dream. The dreams

have two types of content: the manifest content and the latent content. Manifest content is the

part of dream which the dream recalls and the latent content is the hidden content of our

dream. The latent content has an underlying meaning.1

Some people don’t even know what dreams are properly. According to Henri Frédéric Amiel

(1989), “The dream is the reflection of the waves of the unconscious life in the floor of the

imagination2” (H. AMIEL 1989).” According to Sigmund Freud (1932), “This day’s residue

is transformed by dream work into a dream and made innocuous by sleep.” 3Overall, dreams

represent our suppressed thoughts which are pushed to the unconscious mind by our

conscious mind. This usually happens when we are scared to face something or to forget

something.

We get different kind of dreams, some are horrifying, in some it may seem you are in a fairy

tale and some might be so realistic that you almost believe that its happening in your real life.

1
http://www.dreammoods.com/dreaminformation/dreamtheory/freud2.htm
2
https://wtfunny.net/the-mind-blowing-mystery-of-dreams/
3
https://simplecapacity.com/2017/05/this-is-how-the-3-types-of-dreams-are-connected-to-your-reality/

3
There are different types of dreams, some are related to our desires, some depict what we fear

and some are related to what we have experienced, commonly known as déjà vu.

I remember getting some dreams as a child which high lightened my fears. I would usually

dream about performing badly in my exams, which I still fear till date. I would get dreams

such as missing my bus, forgetting my pen at home, not being able to finish on time and

many more situations like these. All of these dreams symbolised my fear of spoiling my

exam; the emotions I felt in these remained constant but the context and the setting changes. I

still continue to get dreams likes these which make me more careful during the days of my

exam.

Dreams help us to understand the emotions by constructing memories of them. What we feel

in the dreams are related to what we actually feel about it in our real life.

Another kind of dreams I experienced were about how I felt about my parents’ relation.

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t share a very good relationship. They would fight

constantly and would stay upset from each other most of the times. This made me question

their relationship and would make me fear the possible consequences of these fights.

Eventually, I started getting dreams about my parents splitting and many more related to this

issue and as my parents’ relation started to improve, the frequency of these dreams

decreased.

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For each individual there might be different consequences and reasons for dreams. Both of

my dreams symbolised fear of some kind which I couldn’t express to anyone and they would

automatically get repressed. The reasons for me were totally different and they impacted me

majorly. This is what motivated me to write this essay and explore this topic in more depth.

There is no definite definition for emotions but it can be defined as “emotion is often defined

as a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence

thought and behaviour.”4 There are different types of emotions that we experience.

According to Paul Ekman, there are six basic emotions: anger, disgust, fear, happiness,

sadness, and surprise5. The two most common emotions we experience in our dreams are

fear and happiness. We get happy dreams and nightmares which are related to these two

emotions which leads us to our research question:

How are the emotions of fear manifested in our dreams?

Hypothesis: Our repressed fears are let out in form of dreams.

When talking about fear in dreams, we’re usually referring to nightmares. “A nightmare is a

dream that results in feelings of extreme fear, horror, distress, or anxiety.”6We usually dream

4
https://www.verywellmind.com/theories-of-emotion-2795717

5
https://www.kairos.com/blog/the-universally-recognized-facial-expressions-of-emotion
6
https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/nightmares

5
during the REM stage of our sleep. REM stands for Rapid eye movement and During this

stage of sleep, your eyes move quickly in different directions. The REM stage usually

happens after 90 minutes into sleep. The first REM stage lasts up to 10 minutes and the later

ones keep increasing to 1 hour. During this time, our heart rate and breathing quickens. The

dreams we get during the REM sleep, we tend to recall them more as our brain is the most

active during that time. REM sleep occurs when the pons, which is present at the base of the

brain, sends signals to the thalamus, which is then sent to the cerebral cortex which is an

outer layer of the brain which is responsible for the processes of learning, thinking and

organizing the information. These signals shut off the neurons in the spinal cord which causes

temporary paralysis in the limb muscles. 7

To explore this question further, dream theories and emotion theories will be looked at.

Theories on dreams

Freud’s Dream Theory:8 Sigmund Freud thought that dreaming was a significant part of

one’s life. He said that through a man’s dreams, his unconscious fears, desires and wished could

be understood.

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=eDDrDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=outer+layer+of+the+brain+
which+is+responsible+for+the+processes+of+learning,+thinking+and+organizing+the+information.&source=bl
&ots=LlYnOOKC0i&sig=xlvok3Wdy-
BGsXq0RQ3n5pyW97I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxtZX_5d_ZAhUDpo8KHZ12C0YQ6AEIODAC#v=onepage&q
=outer%20layer%20of%20the%20brain%20which%20is%20responsible%20for%20the%20processes%20of%20
learning%2C%20thinking%20and%20organizing%20the%20information.&f=false
8
https://io9.gizmodo.com/10-theories-that-explain-why-we-dream-897195110

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In our daily lives, we use the word subconscious and unconscious interchangeably. The

subconscious is a part of the consciousness that we are not aware of, at the moment. They are

in the back of our head, we remember it, but are not using that information at that point. On

the other hand, Freud said that there is a part of the mind which consists of the “repressed”

material and this cannot be known to the conscious mind. When the conscious mind pushes

something to the unconscious mind, it is known as repression. This usually happens when

one doesn’t want to face something or doesn’t want to deal with it.

Sigmund Freud believes that emotions can significantly affect the content of the dream.
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This happens because our dreams portray all the emotions that we repress during the day.

J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977): The activation synthesis model10: This

model suggests that dreams result when the brain tries to make sense of what is happening

around us while were asleep. According to Hobson, the high levels of activity in the brain

during the REM sleep, is what causes dreams. They said that dreaming is totally biological

and has nothing to do with the psychological part of the brain.

9
Edexcel GCSE Psychology book
10
https://io9.gizmodo.com/10-theories-that-explain-why-we-dream-897195110

7
Jie Zhang (2004): Continual-activation theory: This theory suggest that our brain is always

storing memories, be it day or night, be it when we are sleeping or when are awake. The

dreams act like temporary storage and we tend to have a vision of all those memories in our

dreams before sending them to the long-term memory to the short-term memory. The

temporary storage, commonly called as dreams bridge the gap between the short-term

memory and the long-term memory. He also said that the working memory model by

Baddley and Hitch can be divided into groups of subsidiary items: first one is to process the

declarative memory and the second one to process procedural memory. Declarative and

Procedural memories are called conscious and non-conscious memories respectively. He also

suggested that the REM sleep processes the procedural memories and the Non-REM sleep

processes the declarative memories and during these processes, the memories are transferred

from temporary memory to the long-term memory.

Francis Crick and Graeme Mitchison (1983): Reverse Learning Theory11: They suggest

that that we dream to get rid of the undesirable modes of interaction in the cells which are in

the cerebral cortex. Our cerebral cortex is made of a network of interconnected cells. These

neuron cells get highly excited to synchronise their bursts. This network of cells can only

support some modes of behaviour and the “unwanted” behaviour is gotten rid of during the

REM sleep. This theory is based on two hypotheses:

11
https://io9.gizmodo.com/10-theories-that-explain-why-we-dream-897195110

8
 • The network of cells is subject to the “unwanted” modes of behaviour which arise

because the network is either disturbed by the growth of the brain or the

modifications that take place in the brain because of experience.

• If this unwanted behaviour exists, then they are “detected and suppressed by a

special mechanism” which happens during the REM sleep. During this, we get rid of

this unwanted mode of behaviour, which is different from forgetting stuff and that is

why it is called the “reverse learning theory.”

Gayle Delaney: She is the co-founder of the International Association for the study of

dreams. She has posed a theory which said that the dreams that frighten you, highlightens

your actual fears. These dreams are warning about something that is threatening you.
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What these dreams actually try to say is that there is something in your waking life

which is bothering you and threatening you, or something or someone that is close to you

and you should do something about it. She suggests that these dreams prepare you to fight

all your fears and try to warn you about your actual fears which you are not aware of.13

Joe Griffin (1933): The expectation fulfilment theory14: Griffin suggested that the function

of dreams is to leave out the emotions (known as expectations in this theory as emotions

only derive when we have expectations) that were not acted upon during the day. He said

that dreaming completes the circuit of the emotional arousal so that we wake up the next day

with new emotions to feel and totally unstressed because of suppressing some emotions. In

12
https://wikr.com/lbpfc-3491-your-nightmares-are-trying-to-tell-you-something-about-an-important-part-of-
your-life/
13
https://www.huffingtonpost.in/entry/how-dreams-can-help-you-fight-fear_n_1566564
14
< http://dreaminglife.org/why-we-dream-the-expectation-fulfillment-theory-of-dreaming/

9
the dreams we get, we are getting over those expectations as they are being fulfilled in our

dreams metaphorically and therefore, we have no emotions of the past day as we have

completed the arousal-dearousal cycle.

Ernest Hartmann (2008): The contemporary Theory15: There are networks being made and

patterns being shifted constantly in our brains which form the physical basis of our minds.

There is a continuum in the construction of these connections. At one end of the continuum,

there are waking activities which are more focused, linear and well-bounded. When moving

along the continuum, we move towards looser waking activities such as day dreaming. These

activities become less focussed and more imaginative. At the other end of this continuum,

lies dreaming. At this stage, the connections we make in our brains are most loose. A lot of

people consider that these loose connections are very random and therefore our dreams are

usually considered meaningless. But Hartmann argued that they are not random and are

dependent on the dreamers’ emotions.

Richard Coutts (2008)16: Emotional selection Theory17: Emotion selection means that our

brain temporarily accommodates the content of dreams we get during the Non-REM sleep.

Schemas co-exist as a network which is why the accommodations can be accidental and are

therefore tested before retention. In the subsequent REM sleep, we dream another set of

dreams as test scenarios. If the accommodations are the previous non-REM sleep alleviate

emotions such as sadness, anxiety or any other emotions which are adaptive during the REM

15
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-we-dream/
16
http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Emotional_selection
17
https://psychologenie.com/psychology-of-dreams

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sleep, will be sent further for retention. The emotions which are destructively negative to

existence will be abandoned or would be tested again.

William James and Carl Lange (1880s): James-Lange Theory of emotion18: This theory

suggested that for someone to experience any kind of emotions, they must first have some

physiological reactions. They said that the emotions are a result of these physiological

reactions that we have during any event. Our emotional reactions are entirely how we

interpret these situations and how we feel about them. That is why the reaction of different

people to same situations can be different as they interpret it according to what they think

about it and how it affects them emotionally.

Kim Witte (1992): Extended Parallel Processing Model19: This theory talks about how

humans react when confronted with a fear production event or a situation. It says that humans

have four ways to approach a fear production situation:

 Self-Efficacy: The individual has a perception that are capable enough perform the

tasks that are required to control the danger

 Response Efficacy: The individual has a perception that if they actually end up doing

that task, will it successfully control the danger or not.

 Susceptibility: The individual has a perception about how likely the threat will impact

them.

 Severity: The individual has a perception on how much will the threat impact them.

18
https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/theoriesofemotion/
19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21416420

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According to the approaches the individual takes, it leads to two outcomes:20

 Either try to control the danger: When the individual thinks that the severity and

susceptibility are high and also perceive that they are actually capable of taking an

action to control the danger.

 Or try to control the fear they have about the threat: This happens when individuals

think that their ability to control danger is low, even when the severity and

susceptibility is high, then they will take actions to control their fear as they think

they cannot do anything about the situation.

Analysis:

Waking up from a nightmare makes us all sweaty, breathless and sad. It bothers us so much

that we cannot fall asleep again. “Nightmares are lengthy dreams with images that evoke

emotions of fear, sadness and anxiety”. The James-Lange theory talks about how our

emotions are determined by our physiological reactions. These physiological reactions

symptomize the emotion of fear which is usually felt in the case of nightmares and bad

dreams. Many therapists say that nightmares can be a caused due to a lot of stress at the same

time and they also help people overcome some traumatic events they must have experienced

in their lives. We usually think that all bad dreams are nightmares, but there is a difference. A

study conducted at University of Montreal revealed that nightmares can have a larger

20
http://slideplayer.com/slide/9907828/

12
emotional impact on us than bad dreams.21 Nightmares are more disturbing as they actually

cause you to wake up and this is directly proportional to what is happening in the dream. For

example, if you are getting a dream of falling from a window, you tend to wake up faster than

someone who is experiencing being chased by an animal. You tend to be more negatively

impacted by nightmares than bad dreams. Also, most people tend to attribute their inner fears

to nightmares which will not always be the case as it is not always the driving force but the

content of the dream which makes you feel emotions. According to a researcher, Zadra, 35%

of the nightmares and 50% of the bad dreams contained emotions of fear, sadness, guilt, etc22.

According to the extended parallel processing method, fear is something that not everyone

can face and they tend to find different excuses when they confront such a situation. So,

when a person a person wakes up from a nightmare, some tend to avoid it and try sleeping

and some tend to overthink about it and decide to either control their fear or control their

dreams by fighting the fears they have.

What are dreams? Dreams are our thoughts. They are the thoughts that are pushed in our

unconscious by the conscious mind. We are unaware of the content in our unconscious. Fear

is an emotion that not many people can express it openly. Fear makes us feel weak and

sensitive which not many people are very comfortable to show, especially men. Another

thing that people have to supress are their sexual desires. Expressing our sexual desires is not

acceptable in society so we just have to repress them into our unconscious until they are let

out as dreams. We are so busy with our daily lives, that emotions like these are usually

forgotten to let out and therefore, occur in our dreams.

21
https://blogs.voanews.com/science-world/2014/01/31/new-canadian-study-analyzes-nightmares-and-bad-
dreams/

13
According to Gayle Delaney, the fearful dreams occur to warn us about something that is

threatening us or our loved ones. As said by Sigmund Freud, we are unaware of the emotions

that are repressed into our unconscious and that is why our dreams help us to figure out what

is threatening us and how we should face it.

Fear as an emotion makes us feel very negative which is why our brain works in a certain

way to get rid of them. According to Crick and Mitchison, our brain tries to get rid of the

unwanted modes of behaviour which occur from experience or from the growth of the brain.

If any kind of unwanted mode of behaviour is detected, it is either suppressed or gotten rid of

in REM sleep. Dreaming usually happens in the REM sleep, where some special kind of

process is going on for us to forget or suppress the emotion that is high lightened in our fears.

The dreams we get during the REM sleep make us feel the emotions we would actually feel

in real life and this is where emotional selection happens. We have two stages in our sleep:

REM and non-REM sleep. During the REM sleep, we get the most important dreams that can

have a major impact on our waking lives occur. In non-REM sleep, we get a set of dreams

which make us feel a certain kind of emotion or a few emotions. These emotions are

accommodated in our mental schemas. “A schema is a mental concept that informs a person

about what to expect from a variety of experiences and situations. Schemas are developed

based on information provided by life experiences and are then stored in memory. Our brains

create and use schemas as a short cut to make future encounters with similar situations easier

to navigate.23” In the subsequent REM sleep, we get a set of test scenarios to verify the

emotions we felt in the previous non-REM sleep. If the emotions are easily adaptive, our

brains tend to send that emotion for retention for future uses and if it is not, then it is either

abandoned or sent for testing again. Ernest Hartmann too argued that dreams are loose

23
https://study.com/academy/lesson/schemas-in-psychology-definition-types-examples.html

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connection that are more of imaginative but are entirely dependent on the dreamer’s

emotions.

Fearful dreams symbolise our inner fears and the fears which we are unaware of. These

dreams make us ready to face threats in real life as well. The Extended Parallel Processing

Model talks about the two approaches to face fear. First is to control the danger and second

is to control your fear. Most people choose to control their fear instead of controlling danger.

This depends on the person’s perception about themselves and if they believe they are strong

enough to fight it or not. The people who choose to control the threats have a good sense of

handling situations and how to face the bigger problems in life. Their level of their emotional

intelligence increases as they are now using their emotions or investing their emotions in the

right direction. “Emotional Intelligence 24is the ability to identify and manage your own

emotions and the emotions of others.” There are generally three skills in emotional

intelligence: emotional awareness; second is the ability to harness emotions and then use

them in different tasks (examples include thinking, problem solving, etc.); third is the ability

to manage emotions and this includes regulation of our own emotions and helping other

people cheer up or calm down. People who opt for the second option also, tend to have higher

level of emotional intelligence as they know how to control their emotions and how to handle

the situations. Researches have been conducted where emotional intelligence is proven better

than Intelligence Quotient. It makes people better leaders and leads to much better career

success and as people already getting prepared to face the fears through their dreams which

will lead them to move forward in their lives in a better way. Emotionally intelligent people

tend to take charge of their emotions in a better way which makes them face their fears.

Just like Freud’s theory, Griffin ‘s theory also makes mention of how people dream about the

emotions that they had to supress during the day. He suggests that the lack of fulfilment of

24
https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/emotional-intelligence

15
expectations during the day induces emotional response at night which lead to having dreams

in which the expectations are fulfilled.

Conclusion

To conclude this essay, the theories explained above in context to fear show that our

emotions are repressed and they are the basis of our dreams. We can either get rid of them or

retain them in our brains for further situations. We get fearful dreams to prepare for further

situations and so that we already to face any threat imposed on us. This makes us more

emotionally intelligent as we can control our emotions well and prepare for further threats.

The emotion of fear is basically manifested in our dreams by suppressing the emotions or

when they are repressed. The emotions in our unconscious have to be let out and our dreams

are the only gateway for them to leave.

This investigation helped me get answer to my questions and also fulfilled my curiosity about

the dreams I used to get. This helped me overcome my fears and also helped me to get rid of

these dreams.

However, there were a few limitations to this research. Primary method of data collection is

the backbone of psychology as most researches are based on observations, questionnaires,

etc. But according to the IB, we are not allowed to conduct primary research. Primary

research would have helped me get more real-life evidences and more perspective to the

investigation. Had I been allowed to conduct a questionnaire, I would have asked the people

questions about the kind of dreams and their frequency which would have given me more

accurate results. But the theories explained above give good evidences about the

manifestation of the emotion of fear in our dreams.

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Overall, my investigation answered my question using these theories could have been more

accurate but the theories given above has helped me come to the conclusion that emotions

such as fear, which can’t let out so openly, are repressed and tend to leave the brain through

dreams.

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