What Are Nightmares in Dreams Language?

Nightmares can perhaps better be defined in terms of the emotions they evoke, rather than any particular subject matter. These emotions are primarily fear, guilt and horror, in various proportions, and the dream ends with the subject waking up. While they might be regarded as disorders of sleep, they are so prevalent, so much a part of normal life that, like sleepwalking, they deserve a place in any account of normal sleep and dreaming.

Sheer terror in a nightmare can be the result of an unseen, hidden menace -for instance, a menace lurking behind a closed door. Unusually for dreaming, the plot is not in this case driven by the visual imagery, rather it is almost as if the feeling of terror is primary, and the purpose of dreaming is to present the somewhat mundane imagery to accommodate the emotion. While some nightmares like this are consummated by the monster making an actual appearance, it is not necessary - the terror may never be actualized.

It is necessary to distinguish 'night terrors' from dreaming nightmares. The former, which are relatively common amongst children, occur during deep, slow-wave (stage 4) sleep and are not accompanied by visual imagery or a coherent dream (Broughton, 1968). Nightmares occurring during REM sleep may be equally frightening, but they take the form of a story with vivid visual imagery.

The purely guilty nightmare can be illustrated in terms of sexual repression and guilt by Mary Baker Eddy's dream of being assaulted by a strange man while she was attending a Christian Science meeting (Shulman, 1979). She managed to disengage herself from this unwanted lover and ran into a house, which unfortunately turned out to be one of ill-repute. The man followed, locked the door, and laughed. Only when Mrs. Eddy understood her predicament did the nightmare dissolve.

Nightmares of pure horror can involve cannibalism, gory death and graveyard ghouls. The author Gustave Flaubert once dreamed of lying in a curtained bed. He was aware of footsteps on the stairs and, at the same time, a breath of foul-smelling air wafted into his room. Then seven or eight black-bearded fellows entered with daggers held between their teeth. They approached the bed; their teeth made gnashing sounds. Each finger left a tell-tale bloodstain on the white bed curtains. For a long while seven or eight pairs of lidless eyes gazed down at Flaubert. The typical prisoner of nightmare, he could neither shout nor move. When at last they drew back, he saw that one side of their faces was skinless and bleeding. They lifted all his clothes, leaving blood on every item, and sat down to eat. As they broke bread it spurted and dripped blood, and their mirth was the rattle in a dying man's throat. The apparitions vanished to leave the whole room smeared with blood. Flaubert knew a choking sensation and felt as if he had swallowed flesh. Then he heard a long cry. (Ibid.)

As in a Hammer horror film, the anticipation of something dreadful was the engine of this dream - for instance, the seven bearded men's appalling appearance was not immediately apparent, and even though they removed Flaubert's clothes and started to eat, there was no explicit imagery of being eaten. In the somewhat incoherent climax, Flaubert was himself implicated in the cannibalistic orgy ~ tasting flesh, presumably his own. Again, it seems that the emotion of horror comes first and the dream is constructed to accommodate it. How else could the dreamer know at the beginning of a nightmare (as he or she always does) that something horrific is going to happen? There are no screen credits at the beginning of dreams to tell you what sort of dream you are going to have, but they might as well be in the nightmares because the terror, horror or guilt is excruciatingly present before the first scenes have even been played.