Nightmares, Abjection, and American Not-Quite Identities

摘要

In evolutionary theory, nightmares simulate threats to survival (Revonsuo, 2006). Many nightmares, this article argues, more likely simulate threats to social identity symbolized as threats to survival. In daily life, people experience major identity threats as abjection, a state in which they feel their self-presentation is a charade. Such feelings come from aspiring to an ideal associated with an internalized cultural model that people doubt they can realize as a plausible social identity, often because of their ambivalence about this ideal. Nightmares dramatize these feelings as well as think about and comment on them through visual metaphors for cultural models that enter dreams. I support and illustrate these ideas through two cases from a Northwest American study of dreaming.