Dreaming in quarantine: linguistic analysis of referential process of dreams during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a collective trauma adversely affecting physical and psychological health. The impact of this trauma made itself manifest in a myriad of ways, including through dreams. This study aimed to explore the Referential Process (RP, Bucci, 2021) of d...

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Published inResearch in psychotherapy (Milano). Vol. 24; no. 2; p. 537
Main Authors Mariani, Rachele, Monaco, Silvia, Christian, Christopher, Di Trani, Michela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Italy PAGEPress Publications, Pavia, Italy 24.08.2021
PAGEPress Publications
Subjects
collective trauma
COVID-19
Dreams
linguistic measures
referential process
SPECIAL ISSUE "Working on dreams, from psychotherapy to neuroscience"
COVID-19
referential process
collective trauma
linguistic measures
Dreams
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Summary:The spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) became a collective trauma adversely affecting physical and psychological health. The impact of this trauma made itself manifest in a myriad of ways, including through dreams. This study aimed to explore the Referential Process (RP, Bucci, 2021) of dreams reported during quarantine. Dream samples were collected through a social blog. Linguistic analysis and clinical evaluation were conducted to explore the group's collective elaboration of a shared traumatic experience. Sixty-eight people (22 males; mean age 26.16 ds. 7.68) contributed to a social-blog, writing their dreams. 91 dreams were collected and transcribed using transcription rules for the Discourse Attributes Analysis Program (DAAP). Linguistic measures of RP were applied and a statistical cluster analysis was performed. In addition, each dream was evaluated by trained judges on three specific qualities of the RP (Arousal, Symbolizing, and Reflection/Reorganizing). Clinical judges in a double-blinded method reached reliable scoring (Arousal α.874 ICC 0.701; Symbolizing α.783 ICC 0.671; Reflection/reorganization α.884 ICC 0.758). Cluster Analysis yielded three dream clusters. 26 dreams fell under a cluster defined as a symbolizing process (Cluster A); 16 into a cluster defined as arousal of emotional activation (Cluster B); and 49 dreams fell into a cluster defined as Reflection/Reorganizing elaboration (Cluster C). Each cluster showed specific linguistic features. The dreams collected through a blog showed a Referential Process that is similar to that found in psychotherapy process. Results suggests that writing dreams can play different functions in processing and integrating social traumatic experience.
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Conflict of interests: the authors declare no potential conflict of interests.
Informed consent: informed consent was obtained from all individual participants in the study.
Data accessibility statement: data supporting the results shown in the paper are available from the corresponding author on request. Citation: Mariani, R., Monaco, S., Christian, C., & Di Trani, M. (2021). Dreaming in quarantine: linguistic analysis of referential process of dreams during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome, 24(2), 176-187. doi: 10.4081/ripppo.2021.537
Ethics: all procedures in studies involving human participants were performed in accordance with the ethics standards of institutional and national research committees and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethics standards. Ethical approval for the study was provided by the Department the University of the Corresponding author. This is an original, not previously published, manuscript.
ISSN:2499-7552
2239-8031
DOI:10.4081/ripppo.2021.537