A Phase Transition of the Unconscious: Automated Text Analysis of Dreams in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Abstract

Aim Psychotherapy could be interpreted as a self-organizing process which reveals discontinuous pattern transitions (so-called phase transitions). Whereas this was shown in the conscious process of awake patients by different measures and at different time scales, dreams came very seldom into the focus of investigation. The present work tests the hypothesis that, by dreaming, the patient gets progressively more access to affective-laden (i.e., emotionally charged) unconscious dimensions. Furthermore, the study investigates if, over the course of psychotherapy, a discontinuous phase transition occurs in the patient’s capacity to get in contact with those unconscious dimensions. Methods and Procedures A series of 95 dream narratives reported during a psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a female patient (published as the “dreams of Amalie X”) was used for analysis. An automated text analysis procedure based on multiple correspondence analysis was applied to the textual corpus of the dreams, highlighting a 10-factor structure. The factors, interpreted as affective-laden unconscious meaning dimensions, were adopted to define a 10-dimensional phase space, in which the ability of a dream to be associated with one or more local factors representing complex affective-laden meanings is measured by the Euclidean distance (ED) from the origin of this hyperspace. The obtained ED time series has been fitted by an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and by non linear methods like dynamic complexity, recurrence plot, and time frequency distribution. Change point analysis was applied to these non linear methods. Results The results show an increased frequency and intensity of dreams to get access to affective-laden meanings. Non linear methods identified a phase transition-like jump of the ED dynamics onto a higher complexity level of the dreaming process, suggesting a non linear process in the patient’s capacity to get in contact with unconscious dimensions. Conclusion The study corroborates the hypothesis that, by dreaming, the patient gets progressively more access to affective-laden meaning intended as unconscious dimensions. The trajectory of this process has been reproduced by an ARIMA model, and beyond this, non linear methods of time series analysis allowed the identification of a phase transition in the unconscious process of the psychoanalytic therapy under investigation.

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“…Our results support the findings of researchers who found that dreams could play a role in the reorganization of experience, particularly, in reference to memories, trauma, and the general ability of problem solving (Fosshage, 2007;. These results are in line with the studies on the psychotherapeutic process, which highlight how dream processing allows for the processing of traumatic experiences (Gennaro et al, 2020). Much research has been carried out on dreams in relation to the pandemic and the main findings highlight the central role that emotional processing plays in the dream function.…”

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“…In conceptualizing the human psyche as a self-organizing process revealing dynamic pattern transitions awake as much as while asleep, the dream could just be the way humans get access to more affective-loaded dimensions and meanings. Automated text-analysis and affect charge-analysis together with time-series analysis of dream narratives carried out as process analysis was able to detect the change-point in a psychotherapeutic process ( Gennaro et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Psychoanalytic work as mentioned above is concerned with memory retrieval and especially with problems in memory retrieval. The symbolic history of the subject is constituted of those contents that together form a signifying chain- with forgetting as an erasure of signifiers ( Gennaro et al, 2020 ). In current neurosciences regarding autobiographical memory a brain network consisting of the prefrontal medial (facilitating retrieval monitoring) and the posteromedial cortical brain regions (enabling the visual imagery processes of memory) has been identified ( Thome et al, 2020 ).…”