Introduction:The continuing impact of spontaneously recalled dreams sometimes depends upon the same kind of unfolding semantic complexity that literary scholars attribute to poetic literary metaphors. Methods:We present the results of two online studies of impactful dreams (i.e., nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams) that reinforce this account. Results:In both Study 1 (N = 147) and Study 2 (N = 157), assessment of dream experience indicated that (a) existential dreams transition into sublime disquietude (inexpressible realizations, self-perceptual depth, disquietude) and (b) transcendent dreams transition into sublime enthrallment (inexpressible realizations; self-perceptual depth, reverence), while (c) nightmares, in contrast, transition into inflexible vigilance. Discussion:Because existential dreams and transcendent dreams support a type of metacognition that enables continued attunement to tension between the metaphoric ("is") and literal ("is not") truth-value of metaphoric dream images, these two types of impactful dreams may precipitate the epistemic-and aesthetic-significance of unfolding semantic resonance within the dream.

Taxonomic studies of dreams that continue to influence the dreamer’s thoughts and feelings after awakening have distinguished three types of impactful dreams: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams. Of these, existential dreams and transcendent dreams are characterized by recurrent metacognitive appraisal of the epistemic tension between complementary (a) metaphoric (A “is” B) assertions and (b) literal (A “is not” B) assertions. Metacognitive appraisal of such complementary metaphoric and literal assertions is detectable as the felt sense of inexpressible realizations. The poesy of such inexpressible realizations depends upon the juxtaposition of a metaphoric topic and vehicle that are both “semantically dense” but at an abstract level “distant” from each other. The result is “emergence” of attributes of the metaphoric vehicle that are sufficiently abstract to be attributes also of the metaphoric topic. The cumulative effect of successive metaphoric/literal categorical transformations produces a higher-level form of metacognition that is consistent with a neo-Kantian account of sublime feeling. Sublime feeling occurs as either sublime disquietude (existential dreams) or as sublime enthrallment (transcendent dreams). The aftereffects of these two dream types are thematically iterative “living metaphors” that have abstract (but not “totalizing”) ontological import.

This paper attempts to rescue the notion of foregrounding from the prevailing focus on defamiliarization. It does so by engaging in a phenomenological dialogue with David Miall's account of foregrounding and feeling and Viktor Shklovsky's discussion of literary device and aesthetic function. In particular, it contextualizes Miall's proposal of the response to foregrounding as a feeling-guided process involving boundary crossings, a defamiliarization-refamiliarization cycle, and self-transformative feelings within Husserl's philosophical analysis of sense constitution. Miall's feeling explorations and explications find their counterpart in Husserl's active egoic turning toward the affective allure and enticement of affective resonances. Using Miall's work as a touchstone, some frequently overlooked aspects of Shklovsky's conception of ostranenie are clarified by drawing on Husserl's notions of the natural attitude, active and passive synthesis, affective allure, expressive explication, and awakenings.

Distressing life events precipitate disturbing dreams in several forms (e.g., nightmares, sleep terrors). Although research has focused on nightmares, some studies have differentiated three types of impactful dreams: nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams (Kuiken et al., 2006; Lee & Kuiken, 2015). In two studies, we examined whether contrasting forms of response to distressing life events (absence-related depression and absence-related melancholy) differentially predict these dream types. In an initial in-laboratory session, participants described their loss and trauma histories, and then, in an online session after awakening from an impactful dream, they completed an Impactful Dreams Questionnaire and a Post-Dream Questionnaire. Analyses of variance and structural equation models indicated that absence-related depression independently mediated the effects of loss, trauma, and traumatic loss on nightmare distress. In contrast, the interplay between absence-related melancholy and absence-related depression mediated the effects of loss, trauma, and traumatic loss on the features of existential dreams. These results suggest that dreamers' response to nightmares resembles reparative regulation of intrusive memories, whereas their response to existential dreams resembles ambivalent reflection on poignant reminiscences. The basis for such reminiscences in existential (and perhaps transcendent) dreams is a level of metacognition that enables attunement to explicitly metaphoric relations between semantically "neighboring " dream representations.

This paper presents a series of three studies describing how reading literature promotes empathy and moral outcomes. We add three contrasts to this field of empirical study: (a) an explanatory and interpretative form of narrative reading engagement (Integrative Comprehension) is contrasted with an expressive and explicative form of aesthetic reading engagement (Expressive Enactment); (b) an explanatory and interpretive form of cognitive perspective-taking (a component of Integrative Comprehension) is distinguished from an expressive and explicative form of empathy (a component of Expressive Enactment); and (c) a local form of moral outcome (involving changes in attitude toward a specific group or outgroup) is distinguished from a global form of moral outcome (involving an inclusive respect for human subjectivity). These contrasts are clarified and contextualized within existential-phenomenological discussions of sense-giving lived experience, agency, and morality. In conclusion, we offer a framework that specifies the potential impact on wellbeing of a form of literary reading that involves existential reflection, especially as conceived within the emerging field of existential positive psychology.

AbstractAlthough several measures of reading engagement (e.g., absorption, immersion) have been developed in recent years, the possibility that they reflect different constructs has not been systematically examined. The present study investigated two factorially independent forms of reading engagement measured by the Absorption-Like States Questionnaire (ASQ;Kuiken & Douglas, 2017,2018). We examined whether (a) expressive enactment (ASQ-EE) and integrative comprehension (ASQ-IC) differentially predict aesthetic, explanatory, and pragmatic reading outcomes; (b) whether the components and outcomes of ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC differ from those of another measure of reading engagement (the Story World Absorption Scale, SWAS;Kuijpers et al., 2014), and (c) whether ASQ-EE and ASQ-IC are differentially related to two measures of trait openness to experience: the Tellegen Absorption Scale (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) and the Big Five Aspects Scale for Openness/Intellect;DeYoung et al., 2007).

Studies that assess modes of reading engagement indicate that open reflection within a distinctively expressive mode of reading engagement triggers not only embodied, enactive, and affective animation of the narrated world (Caracciolo, 2014) but also shifts in text- and self-understanding (Kuiken & Douglas, 2018; Menninghaus et al., 2019). There is gradually increasing clarity about the processes by which these modes of reading engagement - and their aesthetic effects (e. g., appreciation, being moved, sublime feeling) - are related to shifts in understanding. Contrasting formulations propose that (a) readers expand their sense of possible selves through engagement with fictional characters’ experiences (Slater et al., 2014); (b) readers’ response to formal and narrative features of the text motivates exploration of alternative self-concepts (Djikic & Oatley, 2014); and (c) readers’ receptive engagement with formal and narrative aspects of the text affords expressive enactment of metaphoric structures that reveal or disclose a self-relevant narrative world (Kuiken & Douglas, 2018). Related studies (e. g., Tangerås, 2018) suggest that self-altering literary reading is especially likely to occur during life crises. In continuing evaluation of these models, researchers rely on experimental studies of variations in reader traits, experimental studies of moment by moment reading activities, and experimental and interview studies of readers during life crises.

Even though the experience of narrative absorption has been studied extensively in recent years, relatively little is known about the personality traits of readers who regularly become absorbed while reading narrative fiction. The present study investigated which personality traits predict absorbed reading, with particular attention to the components of the Tellegen Absorption Scale (TAS; Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974) that do so. In an online survey study, introductory psychology students (N = 264) described their most memorable reading experience from the last year and elaborated on that experience by completing the Story World Absorption Scale (Kuijpers, Hakemulder, Tan, & Doicaru, 2014) and the Absorption-like States Questionnaire (Kuiken & Douglas, 2017). In addition, they were asked to complete several personality questionnaires (the TAS; Need for Cognition, Cacioppo, & Petty, 1982; Openness to Experience, DeYoung, Quilty, & Peterson, 2007; Emotional Coping, Stanton, Kirk, Cameron & Danoff-Burg, 2000) and to answer questions about their reading habits. The results indicate that (1) the chosen personality measures reflect closely related but distinct aspects of "global openness to experience," (2) the effects of personality traits on absorbed reading are generally mediated by reading habits, and (3) sustained concentration and attentional flexibility are generic aspects of several absorption-like states predicted by trait measures of openness to experience.

Abstract Articulation of an interactive model of literariness calls for separate specification of (a) a text’s perceptible mode of representation, (b) a reader’s mode of engagement with a text so perceived, and (c) the generative (e.g., creative, expressive) effects of the interaction between this mode of representation and mode of reader engagement. We present a model that identifies two aspects of metaphoric textual representation: structured sequences of nominal metaphors and quasi-metaphoric structures with optional metaphoric construal. This model also distinguishes two modes of reader engagement: expressive enactment and integrative comprehension (Kuiken & Douglas, 2017). The generativity of literary reading is located especially within the interplay between expressive enactment and sequences of metaphoric (and quasi-metaphoric) modes of representation. Evidence suggests that readers reporting expressive enactment also report inexpressible realizations and a temporal progression leading through epistemic tensions that comprise “living metaphor” (Ricoeur, 1981). Thus the generativity – and aesthetic effects – of literary reading are found within the departures from conventionality that comprise the emergent meanings of complex metaphoric structures.

The proposal that impactful dreaming is "involuntary poetry" suggests that some dreams facilitate creative thinking and have aesthetic aftereffects. In two online studies (n = 107 and 117), participants completed three tasks immediately after awakening from a dream: (a) an index of metaphoric creativity, (b) a measure of the interactive combination of associative fluency and restraint, and (c) a version of the Remote Associates Test. Results indicated that, after existential dreams (Studies 1 and 2) and perhaps transcendent dreams (Study 2), participants who reported dissociative absorption provided higher scores on the interactive combination of associative fluency and restraint. Results for both studies also indicated that participants who reported dissociative absorption following significant loss (including traumatic loss) had lower postdream scores on the remote associates task. Finally, results for Study 2 indicated that participants who awakened from impactful dreams (existential dreams, transcendent dreams, or nightmares) were more likely than those who awakened from mundane dreams to include a metaphoric vehicle and topic in the same ad hoc class (although for conventional metaphors only). This pattern of results indicates that a generative and expressive form of postdream creativity follows awakening from existential and transcendent dreams (but not nightmares), although whether this form of creativity supports aesthetically significant metaphoricity remains unclear.

Abstract Rather than articulating a univocal conception of absorption, we provide a theoretical rationale for the Absorption-like States Questionnaire (ASQ), an instrument that incorporates alternative conceptions of absorption based upon contrasts between forms of (1) attention (sustained concentration and attentional reorienting); (2) embodied space (peri-personal and extra-personal space); (3) self-other relations (pre-enactive empathy and cognitive perspective-taking); and (4) verisimilitude (generalizing realism and self-implicating givenness). Structural equation modeling indicated that, in conjunction with open reflection, a type of absorption called expressive enactment distinctively predicted aesthetic outcomes. In contrast, also in conjunction with open reflection, a type of absorption called integrative comprehension distinctively predicted explanatory outcomes.

This article examines the social and psychological function of the “scar” metaphor at the turn from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. We propose that the widely employed scar metaphor, which was first created in the scar literature movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, enabled Chinese readers to “work through” the blend of psychological and ideological disquietude that lingered after the Cultural Revolution. We will first clarify how the scar metaphor facilitated this process of “working through,” using as an example Lu Xinhua’s “The Scar” (Shanghen ). We will then describe how the scar metaphor became dispersed throughout Chinese popular culture and enabled a broad spectrum of Chinese readers to participate in a similar process. At both levels of analysis, we will argue that the scar metaphor simultaneously provides a literary space for working through personal trauma and related anxieties about the ideological transition during this socio-political change.

This study explored (a) the continuity between waking mindfulness and dream mindfulness and (b) the effects of dream mindfulness on subsequent waking thoughts and feelings. Results supported a modified version of the hypothesized cross-state continuity. Presleep mindfulness predicted a specific form of dream reflective awareness (the combination of intradream self-reflection and dual perspectives)-but only in mundane dreams. Also, dream mindfulness (the combination of intradream self-reflection, dual perspectives, and lucid mindfulness) predicted postdream increases in self-reflection-especially after transcendent dreams. Finally, transcendent dreams, which contained intradream self-reflection, were followed by reported spiritual transformation, whereas existential dreams, which also contained intradream self-reflection, were followed by reported self-perceptual depth. In sum, for ordinary dreams, presleep mindfulness is continuous with a modified form of dream reflective awareness; for transcendent dreams, intradream self-reflection may precipitate subsequent spiritual transformation; and, for existential dreams, intradream self-reflection may precipitate subsequent self-perceptual depth.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of reading medium and a paratext manipulation on aspects of narrative engagement. In a 2 (medium: booklet vs. iPad) by 2 (paratext: fiction vs. nonfiction) between-subjects factorial design, the study combined state oriented measures of narrative engagement and a newly developed measure of interface interference. Results indicated that, independently of prior experience with reading on electronic media, readers in the iPad condition reported dislocation within the text and awkwardness in handling their medium. Also, iPad readers who believed they were reading nonfiction were less likely to report narrative coherence and transportation, while booklet readers who believed they were reading nonfiction were, if anything, more likely to report narrative coherence. Finally, booklet (but not iPad) readers were more likely to report a close association between transportation and empathy. Implications of these findings for cognitive and emotional engagement with textual narratives on paper and tablet are discussed.

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