Study of Parents Trying to Fulfill their Dreams through their Children

Some parents desire for their children to fulfill their own unrealized ambitions, just as psychologists have long theorized, according to a new first-of-its-kind study.

Researchers found the more that parents see their child as part of themselves, the more likely they are to want their child to succeed in achieving their own failed dreams.

The results might help explain the actions of so-called "stage moms" or "sports dads" who push their sometimes-unwilling children to become stars of the stage or gridiron, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.

"Some parents see their children as extensions of themselves, rather than as separate people with their own hopes and dreams," Bushman said.

"These parents may be most likely to want their children to achieve the dreams that they themselves have not achieved."

The study was led by Eddie Brummelman of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. It appears online today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The results, while not surprising, had not previously been the subject of empirical research, Bushman said.

"Right from the beginning of psychology, there have been theories that parents transfer their own broken dreams onto their children," he said. "But it really hasn't been experimentally tested until now."

The study, conducted in the Netherlands, involved 73 parents (89 percent mothers) of a child aged 8 to 15.

Parents first completed a scale designed to measure how much they saw their children as part of themselves – from completely separate to nearly the same. This scale is commonly used in psychology, and has been found to be very reliable, Bushman said.

The participants were then randomly separated into two groups. In one group, the parents listed two ambitions they had not been able to achieve in their lives, and wrote about why these ambitions were important to them.

The other group completed a similar exercise, but focused on an acquaintance's ambitions rather than their own.

Some of the dreams that eluded parents included becoming a professional tennis player, writing a published novel and starting a successful business.

Now that the parents were thinking about unfulfilled ambitions, they were asked several questions that probed their desire to have their child achieve their own lost dreams.

For example, they were asked how strongly they agreed with statements like "I hope my child will reach goals that I wasn't able to reach."

Results showed that parents who reflected on their own lost dreams (as compared to those of acquaintances) were more likely to want their children to fulfill them – but only if they felt strongly that their child was a part of themselves.

ADHD /ADD /Dyslexia - Carl Jung

Listen to the voices of the past if they have meaning for you. Here is a quote from Carl Jung;

"The evolutionary stratification of the psyche is more clearly discernible in the dream than in the conscious mind. 

In the dream the psyche speaks in images, and gives expression to instincts that derive from the primitive levels of nature. 

Therefore, through the assimilation of unconscious contents, the momentary life of consciousness can once more be brought into harmony with the law of nature…and the person can be led back to the natural law of his own being." JUNG – CW 16 para 351

According to Jung, the person with ADD /ADHD  /dyslexia speaks the same language as, or a more direct version of, the human psyche.

He is speaking of pure thoughts and dreams that are uninterpreted and diluted by the limited use of language to describe them.

In this way they are more powerfully conceived and nurtured in the artist's brain and can be better expressed in the visual, musical and performing arts, where image, colour, sound and movement are the direct result.

We have come a long way since the closed, mystery-filled world of Carl Jung. We have changed and developed our world, making the acquisition of knowledge and the expression of ideas simpler, more acceptable and accessible for many more people.

The written language is a way to express ourselves, to relate the past, tell stories and to communicate. In the past it was our only way but now, in our multi-media, surround-around, upload-download, smartphone world, it has become much less important.

More Carl Jung Quotes here

Wake Up and Dream - Radiolab

Matt Kielty introduces us to Steve Volk, a city reporter in Philadelphia who, for decades, was plagued by a recurring nightmare.

It popped up whenever Steve was going through a stressful time, and it always played out exactly the same way but no matter how self-aware Steve was about his most current set of anxieties, and no matter how hard he tried to rationalize and explain away the dream...he couldn't make it stop.

Then one year, Steve started working on a book about topics at the edge of science, and along the way he stumbled into lucid dreaming.

Pretty soon, Steve was reading through old sleep studies conducted by a scientist named Stephen LaBerge, and he was starting to wonder if lucid dreaming might not be so near the fringe after all.

So he called up LaBerge's assistant and began training himself on a set of techniques that would eventually help him put his inner demon to bed.

Read more:
Fringe-ology, by Steve Volk
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge

The seat of meta-consciousness in the brain - Sleep

This shows the brain regions activated more strongly during lucid dreaming than in a normal dream.

Credit: MPI of Psychiatry 

Studies of lucid dreamers visualize which centres of the brain become active when we become aware of ourselves. 

Which areas of the brain help us to perceive our world in a self-reflective manner is difficult to measure.

During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves. In sleep, however, we are not, but there are people, known as lucid dreamers, who can become aware of dreaming during sleep.

Studies employing magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) have now been able to demonstrate that a specific cortical network consisting of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar regions and the precuneus is activated when this lucid consciousness is attained.

All of these regions are associated with self-reflective functions. This research into lucid dreaming gives the authors of the latest study insight into the neural basis of human consciousness.

The human capacity of self-perception, self-reflection and consciousness development are among the unsolved mysteries of neuroscience.

Despite modern imaging techniques, it is still impossible to fully visualise what goes on in the brain when people move to consciousness from an unconscious state.

The problem lies in the fact that it is difficult to watch our brain during this transitional change. Although this process is the same, every time a person awakens from sleep, the basic activity of our brain is usually greatly reduced during deep sleep.

This makes it impossible to clearly delineate the specific brain activity underlying the regained self-perception and consciousness during the transition to wakefulness from the global changes in brain activity that takes place at the same time.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry in Munich and for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and from Charité in Berlin have now studied people who are aware that they are dreaming while being in a dream state, and are also able to deliberately control their dreams.

Those so-called lucid dreamers have access to their memories during lucid dreaming, can perform actions and are aware of themselves – although remaining unmistakably in a dream state and not waking up. As author Martin Dresler explains,

"In a normal dream, we have a very basal consciousness, we experience perceptions and emotions but we are not aware that we are only dreaming. It's only in a lucid dream that the dreamer gets a meta-insight into his or her state."

By comparing the activity of the brain during one of these lucid periods with the activity measured immediately before in a normal dream, the scientists were able to identify the characteristic brain activities of lucid awareness.

"The general basic activity of the brain is similar in a normal dream and in a lucid dream," says Michael Czisch, head of a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry.

"In a lucid state, however, the activity in certain areas of the cerebral cortex increases markedly within seconds.

The involved areas of the cerebral cortex are the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, to which commonly the function of self-assessment is attributed, and the frontopolar regions, which are responsible for evaluating our own thoughts and feelings.

The precuneus is also especially active, a part of the brain that has long been linked with self-perception." The findings confirm earlier studies and have made the neural networks of a conscious mental state visible for the first time.

More information: Provided by Max Planck Society

Let Go of Unachievablle Goals and be Happier

Reaching for the Moon? People who let go of unachievable old goals have a better quality of life, McGill University researchers have discovered. The discovery was made when they were studying data of breast cancer patients.

Researchers had studied 176 breast cancer survivors between the ages of 28 and 79. Self-reports of the individual's capacity to adjust their goals were measured at the start of the study. At the same time, researchers measured self-report of physical activity, sedentary activity, emotional well-being, and daily physical symptoms such as nausea and pain.

Three months later, they took a look at another round of self-reports. The study found that goal reengagement (being able to set new goals) was associated with more physical activity, increased emotional well-being and fewer physical symptoms. In addition, breast cancer survivors who were able to let go of old goals and to find new ones were less sedentary, which contributed to improved well-being. These findings support earlier research showing that goal adjustment can influence better well-being and health.

"By engaging in new goals a person can reduce the distress that arises from the desire to attain the unattainable, while continuing to derive a sense of purpose in life by finding other pursuits of value," said Carsten Wrosch, researchers at Concordia University's Department of Psychology and Centre for Research in Human Development. "Abandoning old goals allows someone to invest sufficient time and energy in effectively addressing their new realities."

Researchers have also suggested that breast cancer survivors should engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous-intensity physical activity every week to gain health benefits.

"It is safe, feasible and effective for enhancing well-being and health among breast cancer survivors," said Catherine Sabiston, researcher at the McGill University. "Unfortunately, few survivors are engaging in the recommended levels of activity."

"Our research reveals that the capacity to adjust goals plays a pivotal role in facilitating not only high physical activity but also low sedentary activity and thereby contributing to overall improved well-being," said Wrosch. "Given that it is possible to influence adjustment to specific goals; it may be beneficial to integrate goal adjustment processes into clinical practice."

Brain Scans Reveal Lucid Dreaming's 'Sleep Cinema'

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany were recently singing their own sweet ode to lucid dreaming, albeit to the tune of the scientific method.

Led by Dr. Micael Czisch, for the first time ever, researchers were able to compare brain activity of lucid dreamers as they consciously entertained the same thoughts while sleeping and while awake.

Lucid dreamers are those who, besides being actively aware of their dream state while sleeping, can also deliberately manipulate their dreams -- a learned skill that is very useful in dream research.

"The main obstacle in studying specific dream content is that spontaneous dream activity cannot be experimentally controlled, as subjects typically cannot perform pre-decided mental actions during sleep," study researcher Michael Czisch said according to LiveScience. "Employing the skill of lucid dreaming can help to overcome these obstacles."

For the study, six lucid dreamers were asked to sleep in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine so blood flow to regions of their brain could be monitored. Once asleep, subjects were asked to confirm their lucid dream-state with a series of of eye movements. They were then asked to purposely "dream" that they were clenching their fists.

Researchers found that brain activity during the lucid dreaming of this task was similar to brain activity of the same task performed while subjects were awake. However, brain activity during sleep was weaker.

The team, which also included scientists from the Charite hospital in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, also found increased activity in parts of the brain that play a vital role in the planning of movements.

“Our dreams are therefore not a ‘sleep cinema’ in which we merely observe an event passively, but involve activity in the regions of the brain that are relevant to the dream content,” explained Czisch

Dyslexia: Do you hear a voice in your head when you read?

As Gary Chevin watched his wife Carol reading a newspaper, he had a sudden realisation. Diagnosed as severely dyslexic at seven, he had always struggled to read.

Gary noticed that Carol was reading without moving her lips, which seemed odd to him as a dyslexic. 'She told me she was reading in her head,' says Gary. 'I asked what that sounded like and she said it was like a voice.

'I have never heard a voice in my head - ever. I was so shocked I nearly fell off my chair.'

Gary, 50, was stunned to learn that when 55-year-old Carol read a letter, she would hear the writer's voice, rather than her own, in her head - and that in her dreams, people spoke.

'It all seemed so alien to me. I have the reading age of a five-year-old so I never read. If I dream, I have visual dreams. They are always totally silent.'

Most people use their inner voice subconsciously. But for those who find they do not have one, it can be a revelation.

'I now understand my actions a lot more,' says Gary, a former builder from Stoke-on-Trent. 'I follow my emotions because I don't have a voice in my head analysing what I'm about to say or do.'

Professor Rod Nicolson, head of work psychology at the University of Sheffield, has been studying dyslexia for many years and was inspired to investigate internal speech after meeting Gary at a conference in 2004. He believes he has found a link between lack of inner speech and poor reading ability.

'Children start off having to say every word out loud,' he says. 'At some stage, as their reading improves, so does their ability to sight-read [to read in their heads] and that is the stage at which reading really takes off.

By the age of eight or nine, most children can read in their heads. The development of the inner voice seems to be automatic for most people, but our data suggests a link with fluent reading, in that the process of learning to sight-read actually helps inner-speech develop.

Read more: Follow this link