Two studies contrasted the short-term effects of nightmares, existential dreams, and transcendent dreams (Busink & Kuiken, 1996; Kuiken & Sikora, 1993). Results from Study 1 indicated that existential dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, transcendent dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported self-perceptual depth; also, transcendent dreams were more likely than mundane dreams, existential dreams, or nightmares to be followed by reported spiritual transformation. Results from Study 2 replicated these findings for existential dreams, indicating also that the type of spiritual transformation associated with transcendent dreams involved an ecstatic sense of release from everyday entanglements. Both existential dreams and transcendent dreams moved the dreamer toward an unbounded sense of life in all things, as did lucid forms of all three dream types. Such unbounded enlivenment suggests an aesthetic substrate to the changes induced by each of these dream types. The contrasting short-term effects of impactful dream types may require integration into a comprehensive model of long-term dream function.

The study explores how readers from an ethnic minority or from an ethnic majority negotiate their cultural identities within a multicultural context. It examines to what extent readers who were either Chinese-Canadian or Euro-Canadian become personally implicated in their reading experiences. Readers were asked to comment on passages that they found striking in two texts, a philosophical and a narrative text written in English by the Chinese author Lin Yutang. It was found that differences between the two ethnic groups of readers occurred only in response to the narrative text. Here a style of reading indicating familiarity with Chinese culture, comparison between the reader's life world and the world of the text, and explicit reference to cultural contrasts, was more frequent among Chinese-Canadian readers; in contrast, a style of commentary that combined evocative elaboration with a form of identification that situated the reader within the implicit “we” of the text, was more frequent among Euro-Canadian readers. These styles of reading suggest different forms of self-implication during reading that can be described respectively as similes or metaphors of personal identification.

Biculturally competent individuals may adopt flexible forms of emotional expression that help them address not only acculturation stress but also the forms of distress that affect bicultural and monocultural individuals alike. In a sample of 174 bicultural undergraduates, level of bicultural competence moderated the effects of an “existential” aspect of depression (i.e., the sense of a foreshortened future) in predicting both expressive flexibility during wakefulness and emotional flux within the content of impactful dreams. Among individuals high in bicultural competence, those who sensed a foreshortened future following loss or trauma were more likely to report: (1) feeling exploration through direct self-reflection; (2) feeling exploration through aesthetic response; and (3) spontaneous emotional flux within impactful dreams. These findings suggest that expressive flexibility among biculturally competent individuals becomes evident in their manner of identifying, understanding, and expressing emotions during a stressful life event.