New study finds ego strength predicts nightmare frequency

People with a healthy ego are less likely to experience nightmares, according to new research published in the journal Dreaming. The findings suggest that the strength of one’s ego could help explain the relationship between psychological distress and frightening dreams.

“This research reflects the convergence of two related interests of mine: why people have nightmares and psychoanalytic theory,” said study author William E. Kelly, an associate professor at California State University, Bakersfield.

“I have been concerned that contemporary nightmare research, and perhaps psychological research in general, has been moving towards a more superficial descriptive approach rather than an attempt to explain what’s beneath the descriptors. For instance, saying someone has nightmares because they’re distressed does not explain why they are susceptible to distress or how the distress translates to the occurrence of nightmares.”

“This research project explores the possibility that the theoretical meta-construct of the ego and its functions is one way to understand this,” Kelly explained.

The researcher was particularly interested in the concept of ego strength, meaning the ability to tolerate unpleasant emotions and adapt when facing self-threatening information.

Three surveys of 416 undergraduate students found that those who scored higher on a measure of ego strength tended to have a reduced frequency of nightmares compared to those who scored lower. In addition, Kelly found that ego strength was a better predictor of nightmare frequency than the personality trait neuroticism and general psychological distress.

“One take-away from this research is the possibility that nightmares occur from some purposeful inner workings of the mind that we are not consciously aware of aimed at either processing or defending against stress or trauma rather than simply a direct reaction to it,” Kelly told PsyPost.

“It would be useful for future research to investigate how lower ego strength might result in more nightmares. Is it that individuals with stronger egos use more healthy defenses and perceptions that combat distress in day-to-day life, thus reducing the need to process and detoxify them during sleep?”

“Another possibility is that there is some mechanism by which individuals with less ego strength try to manage vague, overwhelming negative emotions during sleep by creating mini-movies, a process I would describe as concretization. After all, when awake it’s usually easier to manage feelings if we use words, images, or some other representation to wrap our minds around. Given there seems to be continuity between waking life and dreams, why wouldn’t our minds try to deal with strong emotions using a similar process when asleep?” Kelly explained.

But the study — like all research — includes some limitations.

For instance, though the findings were found across three separate samples, they included only university students that were less diverse and younger than the population at large. Also, only self-reported measures were used to show that more nightmares and lower ego strength are generally reported together. There was no manipulation to demonstrate that ego strength or distress causes nightmares,” Kelly said.

“Finally, we are inferring the existence and functional purposes of a hypothetical ego structure in the mind. It is possible that the measure of ego strength used in this study may have simply reflected general mental health without the presumed functions such as separating reality and fantasy or defenses to manage unpleasant experiences and protect the self-concept.”

“Additional replications of this study are needed using larger, more diverse samples from the community and different measurement devices,” Kelly said.

There appears to be some sort of connection between well-being and nightmares. Previous research has also found that depression and insomnia are risk factors for frequent nightmares. But the root cause of nightmares is still unclear.

“Though psychology, medicine, and philosophy have been trying to understand nightmares for a long time, there is a surprising amount of disagreement among experts about how and why they occur and much we do not know about this phenomenon,” Kelly said.

“Another issue is that nightmares can be either traumatic (repeating elements from a trauma) or idiopathic (those apparently not related to a trauma). We don’t know if these are different but related phenomena. If they are different, these different forms of nightmares could serve different functions.”

“In other words, traumatic and idiopathic nightmares could result from the sleeping ego trying to work through two different things using different internal processes but producing a similar outcome. Most nightmare research, including this study, doesn’t compare traumatic and idiopathic nightmares in the same samples. Until we do, we won’t be able to know,” he added.