Dream repairwork

Even if we don't yet know how to help people change through their dreams, we can profit by studying how their dreams are influenced by the circumstances (обстоятельства) of their waking lives. One recent survey, for example, asked people whether the amount of time they spent dreaming at night was influenced by what they were feeling during the day. Out of 271 women, 80 percent said there were times when they were aware of dreaming more than their usual amount, and 47 percent said there were times that they were dreaming less. The women dreamed more, they said, during "times of undue stress" and "blue and upset moods" and less "when things were going especially well". This may mean only that when we are upset we are likely to sleep more lightly, and so are more likely to awaken and become aware of our dreams. However, it is also probable that in times of stress, dreams seem to have more work to do in resolving our problems and are thus more salient (характерный) and memorable. When things are going well by day, we appear to have less need to dream about such weighty matters.

If dreams do help us work through tensions and problems from the previous day, then we should wake up feeling better than when we went to sleep. This mood regulation function of dreaming has been confirmed by Milton Kramer and Thomas Roth, working at the university of Cincinnati. Kramer and Roth studied the moods of some subjects before and after they went to sleep. They found that in cases in which a person's mood improved after sleep it was usually related to specific aspects of what they had dreamed.

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Choose the appropriate form while reading the passage.

Even though investigators do not yet completely understand dreams, modern methods of study have answered a great many questions about them. Here are some questions that are known (to have been answered, to be answered).

Does everyone dream? Although many people do not recall dreams in the morning, "recallers" and "nonrecallers" appear (to dream, to have dreamt) equally often. Two hypotheses have been proposed to account for the differences in recall of dreams. One is that nonrecallers are believed (to be having, to have) an inherent (врожденный) difficulty in recalling dreams (Lewis and others, 1966). The other hypothesis is that some people awaken more readily in the midst of REM and thus report more dreams. In other words, the reason we remember dreaming is that we happened (to be waking up, to wake up) while we were dreaming. Regardless of the fate of these hypotheses everyone is certain (to have dreamt, to dream).

How long do dreams last? Occasionally dreams seem (to have been, to be) instantaneous (мгновенный). However, when subjects are asked (to be described, to describe) or panto­mime a dream, the time it takes for them to do so is directly proportional to the length of time they were in REM sleep before being awakened (Dement and Wodperf, 1958).

Do people know when they are dreaming? Subjects arc likely (to train, to be trained) within one night to discriminate between periods of dreaming and non-dreaming. One test is to have the subject hold a switch in one hand while sleeping, with instructions to close it while dreaming (Salamy, 1970).

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