Research Statement

Ming-Ni Lee

My research projects focus on issues related to dreaming (especially lucid dreams and impactful dreams), reflective awareness, consciousness, self-reflection, self-transformation, mindfulness, psychological health, interpersonal relationships, values and beliefs, social cognition, learning, spirituality, etc. I am willing to undertake collaborative research and supervise students’ research projects on topics closely linked to these research lines. My major research interests with regard to dreaming, mindfulness, and psychological health are further discussed as follows.

Self-Transformative Effects of Dreams ----

In collaboration with Dr. Don Kuiken during my PhD program, we have published two studies (i.e., Kuiken, Lee, Eng, & Singh, 2006) that further support the previous findings of self-transformative effects of dreams investigated in our lab (e.g., Busink & Kuiken, 1996; Kuiken & Sikora, 1993). It was suggested that different types of impactful dreams have different effects on waking thoughts and feelings: e.g., transcendent dreams facilitate spiritual transformation, existential dreams prompt self-perceptual depth. More specifically, dreams can sometimes prompt the dreamers to recognize spiritual possibilities and change their spiritual lives accordingly—spiritual transformation. Self-perceptual depth can be considered as a form of feeling-oriented reflection (Gendlin, 1997), which deepens dreamers’ felt meaning of the unrecognized sense of self and aspects of their personal lives. Dr. Kuiken and I are also currently preparing a research paper regarding our study on Impactful Dreams During Bereavement, in which the findings suggest the peak appearances of dream types occurred at different intervals following a significant loss due to death. Specifically, nightmares were relatively frequent only during the first six months; existential dreams were also especially frequent during the first six months, and transcendent dreams did not appear frequently until relatively late during bereavement (Kuiken & Lee, in preparation). Our research findings all point in the direction of self-transformative effects of dreams being associated with dream reflective awareness.

Dream Reflective Awareness ----

Built upon the research I collaborated with Dr. Kuiken, the findings have prepared us to explore the relationships between dream reflective awareness and dream function that have not been addressed in the realm of dream studies. Most previous studies on the influence of reflective awareness during dreaming on subsequent waking life have addressed the significance of lucid dreams, although they examined only the effects of explicit awareness of dreaming. Moreover, their focus has been mainly on their therapeutic utility (e.g., treatment for nightmares) and their role in skill development (e.g., practice in a simulated world) (LaBerge, 1985; Zadra, 1996; Zadra & Pihl, 1997). Among the preliminary accounts of the transformative effects of lucid dreams, some studies have considered the importance of dream control in mastering life (Tholey, 1988). This approach, however, may reflect a Euro-North American view of dreaming and its practical value. Some research has indicated that lucid dreaming is valued for different reasons in East Asian social and cultural contexts, where lucid dreaming, understood as analogous to mindfulness meditation, is regarded as a path toward self-transcendence (Alexander, Cranson, Boyer, & Orme-Johnson, 1987; Gackenbach, 1991; Hunt, 1989, 1991; Hunt & Ogilvie, 1988; Tedlock, 2004; Tulku, 2000). In other words, the self-transformative potential of dreaming lies in its attentive awareness, rather than problem mastery, that is carried over into wakefulness.

Thus, understanding the complexity and subtlety of dream reflective awareness is the critical step for us to investigate the function of lucid dreaming on psychological health, self-development, and even self-transcendence. One of our recent studies has identified five patterns of dream reflective awareness that were further used to create scales with high internal consistency and conceptual clarity (i.e., Lee, Kuiken, & Czupryn, 2007). Based on these continuous efforts, my dissertation—Reflective Awareness in Dreams following Loss and Trauma—has addressed the issues with regard to the self-transformative effects of impactful dreams. The major results suggested that (1) although both transcendent dreams and existential dreams involved prelucid states, only transcendent dreams were highly related to explicit lucidity; (2) loss and trauma histories predicted different patterns of reflective awareness within dreams; and (3) reflective awareness within dreams was predictive of subsequent changes in waking reflective awareness. The results also indicated dream-type specific continuity of reflective awareness across dreaming and wakefulness. Most importantly, it has demonstrated the continuity between dreaming and waking reflective awareness, and helps to clarify the ways in which reflective awareness within dreams may affect post-traumatic growth.

Dreaming, Mindfulness, and Psychological Health ----

Mindfulness is a Buddhist form of spiritual discipline that is central to all branches of Buddhism. Nowadays, the concept and practice of mindfulness has been gradually integrated into contemporary Western psychology and applied to the area of psychotherapy (e.g., Shapiro & Schwartz, 2000; Welwood, 1980). There has been substantial evidence suggesting that mindfulness training is associated with reduction of physical symptoms, successful treatment of psychological disorders (e.g., anxiety, depression, etc.), psychological well-being, and spiritual growth (e.g., Alexander, Langer, Newman, Chandler, & Davies, 1989; Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007; Miller, Fletcher, & Kabat-Zinn, 1995). These intriguing findings suggest that mindfulness is not only an approach to enhancing spiritual life, but it can also have substantial influence on the psychological and physiological levels. Nevertheless, how this mindful quality exerts its influence during waking and dreaming is still unclear to us.

Therefore, in my PhD dissertation research, I investigated mindfulness across both waking and dreaming states and attempted to understand its positive contribution to psychological health. One of the significant findings suggested that, independent of the loss/trauma conditions, lucid mindfulness within the dream may facilitate the reduction of waking rumination, which is a form of coping strategy usually contributing to perpetuating psychological distress (e.g., Stroebe et al., 2007). However, this pattern was only found in the 6-24 month timeframe group(s), meaning there is a critical period for cultivating mindfulness during dreaming in order to maximize its health benefits for human life.

Future Research ----

I believe that clarifying the possible relationships between reflective awareness within dreams and during waking life may help us to understand the significance of dreams (e.g., how dreams contribute to post-traumatic growth) and the nature of human consciousness. Past research has documented the therapeutic function of lucid dreams for treating nightmares (e.g., LaBerge, 1985; Tholey, 1988; Zadra, 1996; Zadra & Pihl, 1997); perhaps, a new look at the role of lucidity within dreams may not only turn the page on the pathological view on dreaming, but also allude to the possibility of triggering insight (e.g., most importantly, increasing sense of reality) and self-knowledge for those who suffer from psychological disorders.

I am prepared to do dream studies with the following research strategies: (1) identifying other significant antecedent and subsequent factors (e.g., mindfulness, anxiety, etc.) related to dream reflective awareness and their roles in dream function; (2) comparing different populations (e.g., healthy adults; clinical patients with PTSD, schizophrenia, etc.; people from different cultural backgrounds: Western and Eastern cultures); and (3) adopting multiple research methods (e.g., revising the measures for dream reflective awareness, developing Chinese versions of relevant research scales, designing a research protocol for structured interviews, etc.). These future research projects will provide us a better understanding of the nature of dream experiences and their influences on waking life.