Is untreated pain a potentially important source of anxiety? Is the state of helplessness (Seligman) a result often of pain that is not treated? The answer is a qualified yes. We find in the history of pain that the absence of pain is a strong goal and that patients will approve of almost any treatment plan if it leads to the absence of pain. In this regard, it is important to note that analgesics have been a major breakthrough in medicine (Morris, 1991). Pain could now be relieved. However, this meant that the agenda of the physician (who can use the pain as important diagnostic source) differs from the agenda of the patient (relief of pain). My own memories of going to hospital because of kidney stones (another uric acid-related highly painful medical problem) exemplify the pain-elimination priority. I immediately wanted relief from the intense pain when I entered the emergency ward of the hospital. However, the physician needed to hold off on the pain-relieving medication until they found out more about the source of the pain in my kidney and/or urethra.
My dream portrayed my frustration in rather dramatic terms. As in the case of findings from the Breger study of patients awaiting or recovering from surgery, my dream was concerned not directly with the pain. The dream was more closely aligned with my feelings about being in pain and with the seeming indifference of other people (particularly the physician) about my pain. I was regressing in my emotional state, looking for a “mothering” figure to eliminate my pain. In some ways, it ends up that the “mother” for me (and perhaps many other patients with Gout or kidney stones) was the painkiller I was taking. This certainly would seem to make my medications dangerous as a source of addiction.
Mood
I move on to other emotions as they relate to the interplay of dreams and reality. Obviously, our dreams will often impact our mood. In a recent study (Schredl and Göritz, 2026), 11 percent of participants indicated that remembered dreams influenced their mood. In many ways, we don’t have to be convinced by the research. After a joyful dream, many of us wake up ready to enjoy the day ahead and savor the special moments that await us. Conversely, after a dreadful dream or nightmare, many of us wake up anticipating a lousy day. Erich Fromm (1951) would suggest that we are inclined after a night of troubled sleep and painfully insightful dreams to view people we meet with a critical eye. We “see through them” and gain a better appreciation of the risks we lead in “hanging out” with them.
Dreams might set the day for a specific mid-set. We enter the day with specific anticipations that often trigger behavior which reinforces the mind-set and confirms predictions associated with this mind-set (called “self-fulfilling prophecies’). Dreams also set the stage for what some researchers call “brain wandering.” For instance, we might find that our daydreams are influenced by the previous night’s dreams. Daydreams, in turn, help to set or re-set our mood. Even more common are the passing thoughts and feelings that were triggered by the recalled dream—or even dreams that were not recalled. Later in this essay, I will suggest that “brain wandering” might, in turn, relate to a powerful ongoing intrapsychic process that I have introduced previously in this series of essays on dreams. This process is called “peremptory ideation.” In essence, how we feel and what we are thinking and imagining when we wake up, impacts our daily life.
It is also worth noting that the causal connection can move in the opposite direction. We can go to bed in a “bad mood” and wake up feeling much better. One or more dreams of the night might have provided some processing that positively impacted our waking mood. There is also the matter of mood being impacted not by the dream, but rather by our awake pondering and even interpreting the meaning of a dream we have recalled. Louis Breger (1961) emphasizes the difference between a dream and interpretation of the dream. What is done with dream material may have a greater impact on our daytime life than the dream itself.
