Experience of Emotions in Dreams

We conducted an empirical phenomenological study of emotion experience in dreams. Unlike previous research in this field, we based our findings on phenomenological data while bracketing our assumptions and judgments about how emotions are experienced. Our study describes the external and internal dynamics of emotion experiences in dreams. We tried to show that phenomenology-based approaches are relevant for investigating experience in dreams and that they allow for a richer description and a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. We also highlight the question of what we are studying when we study emotion experience in dreams, as we show how the same emotions can be experienced differently each time and different emotions can share the same components in one single dream.