In the moment of insight, there is a sudden, yet conscious realization that stems from the change in the way one’s problems are interpreted. Since these moments of insight take place following a period of unconscious situational processing, insight appears very suddenly. This presents a stark contrast to the analytical processing that many people may be accustomed to, as analytical processing typically occurs in a stepwise and conscious mechanism.
In Dr. Carola Salvi’s work on insight, she describes the phenomenon of insight as an all-at-once problem solving phenomenon. The process in which an insight is reached is one that involved a level of awareness, according to Salvi. In addition to this, when undergoing the process of insight, we go into a sort of “unplugged” mode where even our visual processing is also redirected away from the problem at hand. Despite this rather unaware state of mind preceding the insight, people tend to be highly confident and sure of their insight (Kounios).
According to Dr. Salvi, the right hemisphere is the dominant hemisphere in insight related processing and thought. Along with insight, the right hemisphere is dominant in the processes for creativity, imagination, and holistic thought. Thus, the right hemisphere of the brain dominates in the spontaneous creativity that is necessary for a sudden insight. Another process that relies on the most part on such spontaneous creativity is dreaming. Because REM sleep is dominated by the right hemisphere of the brain along with creative thought, dreaming is said to be dominated by the right hemisphere as well. This is the reason why many people aren’t able read, or tell time in their dreams, and find it difficult to write down their dreams, as this requires processes of the left hemisphere. Due to the fact that dreams are often dominated by the right hemisphere of the brain, along with insight, the recounting of dreams and their meanings have been shown to be significant in the production of insights.
According to a Time Magazine article, by Alice Robb, when our “ancestors intuited,” they talked about their dreams. Robb points out that the societal aversion of talking dreams is a very recent phenomenon, and that we should go back to the ways of our ancestors. Robb describes that recounting dreams with friends or analyzing them in structured groups can reap many benefits such as bring people closer together. Building off of Dr. Salvi’s ideas of the right brain being the crucial component in insight-related processing and thought, a study from Montage Ullman, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist has shown that dream recounting and “dream analysis” allow people to “gain insight and social connection from their dreams” (Robb).
In one of the studies performed by Ullman, college students were told to either recount a dream and a very emotional midday experience in a 45 minute rotation session. From this study, Ullman found that recounting dreams lead to a significant increase of the scaled scores of insight compared to that of sharing an emotional midday experience. When asked to qualitatively describe the phenomenon, students described forming exploration insight, saying “I learned more about issues in my waking life from working with the dream,” and also forming personal insight saying, “I got ideas during the session for how to change some aspect(s) of myself or my life,” and “I learned a new way of thinking about myself and my problems” (Robb).
Robb then shows a second study of the significance of dreams in insights, this time by Clara Hill, a psychologist at the University of Maryland. In this study, dream groups are interestingly used to improve a relationship or cope with a breakup. In this experiment, Clara Hill recruited 34 women going through a divorce and put 22 of them through a weekly dream group. Many of their dreams were themed around pain, failure, and their insecurities. The remaining 12 subjects that comprised the control group had to wait until the end the two-month trial to recount their dreams all in one sitting. Through this study, it was found that the 22 subjects that participated in the regular weekly dream group not only attained insight into the roots of their problems, but they also ended the study “higher on measures of overall self-esteem” (Robb). Thus, this interesting finding shows that not only does the recounting of dreams evoke insight into your deeper problems, but doing so regularly is key to achieving insightful thought and potentially a higher self esteem.
Sources:
Kounios, J., & Beeman, M. (2014). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight. Annual Review of
Psychology, 67 79-85.
Robb, Alice. “Why Talking About a Dream You Had Can Be Good for You.” Time, Time, 16 Nov. 2018, time.com/5456903/why-we-dream-alice-robb/.
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