目 录 上一节 下一节 
让头脑畅想 Until recently daydreaming was generally considered either a waste of time or a symptom of neurotic tendencies, and habitual daydreaming was regarded as evidence of maladjustment or an escape from life's realities and responsibilities. It was believed that habitual daydreaming would eventually distance people from society and reduce their effectiveness in coping with real problems. At its best, daydreaming was considered a compensatory substitute for the real things in life. 直到最近白日做梦通常被认为不中浪费时间就是要患精神病的征兆。习惯性白日做梦被看作精神失调的证据或是对现实生活和责任的逃避。人们相信，习惯性白日作梦被认为是代替生活现实的补偿品。 As with anything carried to excess, daydreaming can be harmful. There are always those who would substitute fantasy lives for the rewards of real activity. But such extremes are relatively race, and there is a growing body of evidence to support the fact that most people suffer from a lack of daydreaming rather than an excess of it. We are now beginning to learn how valuable it really is and that when individuals are completely prevented form daydreaming, their emotional balance can be disturbed. Not only are they less able to deal with the pressures of day-to-day existence, but also their self-control and self-direction become endangered. 任何事情做得过分都可能有害，白日做梦也是一样。总有那么一些人，他们用想入非非的生活来代替实际活动得到的好处。但是这一类极端的情况极为罕见，愈来愈多的资料都能证明这样一种看法：大多数人的白日梦做得太少了，而不是太多了。现在我们才开始了解到它确实是那么有价值。当一个人被禁止做白日梦时，他们的感情平衡就可能被搅乱。不仅使他们更难以对付日常的生活压力，而且他们的自我控制和自我定向变得岌岌可危。 Recent research indicates that daydreaming is part of daily life and that a certain amount each day is essential for maintaining equilibrium. Daydreaming, science has discovered, is an effective relaxation technique. But its beneficial effects go beyond this. Experiments show that daydreaming significantly contributes to intellectual growth, powers of concentration, and the ability to interact and communicate with others. 最近的研究表明，白日做梦是日常生活的一部分，每天做一定数量的白日梦对保持平衡是必不可少的。科学已经发现白日梦是一种有效的消遣技巧。但它的有利影响不只这一点，实验表明，白日梦特别有助于智力的发展，有助于全神贯注的能力和与人交往、交流的能力。 In an experiment with schoolchildren in New York, Dr. Joan Freberg observed improved concentration: "There was less running around, more happy feelings, more talking and playing in the group, and more attention paid to detail. 在纽约对学童的一次实验中，琼·弗雷伯格博士观察到了注意力的改善："四处乱跑的现象少了，孩子们更开心，更爱一起谈话，一起玩了，而且更多地注意细节 
。""在耶鲁大学的另一个实验中，杰罗姆·辛格博士发现白日做梦可以提高自我控制力和增强创造性的思维能力。辛格指出，白日做梦是个人超越现实的一种方式。他得出一个结论，白日做梦对成功是一种强有力的刺激。 But the value of daydreaming does not stop here. It has been found that it improves a person's ability to be better adapted to practical, immediate concerns, to solve everyday problems, and to come up more readily with new ideas. Contrary to popular belief, constant and conscious effort at solving a problem is, in reality, one of the most inefficient ways of coping with it. While conscious initial effort is always necessary, effective solutions to especially severe problems frequently occur when conscious attempts to solve them have been put off. Inability to relax, to let go of a problem, often prevents its solution. 但白日梦的价值并非仅限于此。已经发现，白日做梦能提高一个人的能力，使他能更好地适应实际的、紧急的事物，解决日常问题，并能较容易地提出新的想法。与普通的观点相反，不断的、有意识的努力常常是必需的，但在放弃解决问题的有意识的尝试时，对于特别严重的问题的有效的解决方法常常才会出现。不会放松，不会对某个问题置之不理，常常妨碍问题的解决。 Historically, scientists and inventors are one group that seems to take full advantage of relaxed moments. Their biographies reveal that their best ideas seem to have occurred when they were relaxing and daydreaming. It is ell known, for example, that Newton solved many of his toughest problems when his attention was waylaid by private musings. Thomas Alva Edison also knew the value of "half waking" states. Whenever confronted with a task which seemed too hard to be dealt with, he would stretch out on his laboratory sofa and let fantasies flood mind. 历史上，科学家和发明家似乎属于充分利用放松时刻的群体。他们的传记提示了他们最好的想法似乎产生在他们放松和幻想的时候。例如，众所周知，牛顿在其注意力被个人深思打断时解决了许多棘手的难题。托马斯o 爱迪生也知道"半清醒"状态的价值。不论何时遇到似乎太难对付的任务，他都要舒展四肢躺在他实验室的沙发上，让幻想任意在脑际流淌。 Painters, writers, and composers also have drawn heavily on their sensitivity to inner fantasies. Debussy used to gaze at the River Seine and the golden reflections of the setting sun to establish an atmosphere for creativity. Brahms found that ideas came effortless only when he approached a state of deep daydreaming. And Cesar Frank is said to have walked around with a dreamlike gaze while composing, seemingly totally unaware of his surroundings. 画家、作家和作曲家十分依赖对内心幻觉的敏感性。德彪西常常盯着塞纳河和落日的金色反光来建立一种创造性的氛围。勃拉姆斯发现只有当他陷入一种深深的幻想状态时，各种想法才会毫不费力地泉涌而出。据说塞萨尔o 弗兰克作曲时，像做梦一样凝视着四处走动，似乎完全意识不到他周围的事物。 Many successful people actually daydreamed their successes and achievements long before they realized them. Henry J. Kaiser maintained that "you can imagine your future," and he believed that a great part of his business success was due to positive use of daydreams. Harry S. Truman said that he used daydreaming for rest. Conrad Hilton dreamed of operating a hotel when he was a boy. He recalled that all his accomplishments were first realized in his imagination. 许多成功者实现他们的成功和成就前，实际上早在做白日梦了。亨利o丁o凯泽坚持说："你能想象你的未来。"他相信他的大部分商业成功是由于幻想的作用。哈利oSo杜鲁门说他利用幻想来休息。当他还是小男孩时，康拉德o希尔顿就幻想经营一家旅馆，他回忆他所有的成功都是首先在他的想象中意识到的。 
伟大的生活开始于人们想象中的图画，这就是有一天他愿意去做的事或成为的样子。弗洛伦斯o南丁格尔想做一名护士，爱迪生反自己描绘成发明家，所有这些人都通过生动形象的想象未来为之追求，从不幸压力中解脱出来。"这就是著名思想家亨利o爱默森o福斯迪克的话，这些话表明人们简直可以用幻想并使自己成功。福斯迪克意识到幻想的强大力量，提出了这样一条建议："在你心目中，尽量长期并稳定保留你自己的形象，你就会被驱使着向这个方向发展。把自己生动形象地描绘成失败者，仅此便可使胜利成淡泡影。把自己描绘为胜利者，就会极大地有助于成功。如果不去描绘自己的未来，你就会像大海上的弃船一样随波逐流。" To get the results, you should picture yourself - as vividly as possible - as you want to be. The important thing to remember is to picture these desired objectives as if you had already attained them. Go over several times the details of these pictures. This will deeply impress them on your memory, and these memory traces will soon start influencing your everyday behavior toward the attainment of the goal. 为了获得成功，你应该把自己描绘成你想要成为的样子--尽可能生动形象。要记住的重要一点是描述这些形象的细节，这将深深地把它们铭刻在你的记忆中，这些记忆痕将很快影响你的日常行为，直至达到目标。 While exercising your imagination, you should be alone and completely undisturbed. Some individuals seem to have the ability to tune into their private selves in the midst of the noisiest crowds or company. But most of us, especially when the experience is new, require an environment free from outside distraction. 在想象时，你应该独处，而且丝毫不受外界干扰。有些人似乎能在最嘈杂的人群中进行自我调节，进入安静状态。但我们中的大部分人，特别是在刚开始做白日梦时，需要一种免受外界干扰的环境。 A life lived without fantasy and daydreaming is a seriously impoverished one. Each of us should put aside a few minutes daily, taking short 10- or 15-minute vacations. Daydreaming is highly beneficial to your physical and mental well-being, and you will find that this modest, inexpensive investment in time will add up to a more creative and imaginative, a more satisfied, and a more self-fulfilled you. It offers us a fuller sense of being intensely alive from moment to moment, and this, of course, contributes greatly to the excitement and joy of living. 没有想象和幻想的生活是极为贫乏的生活。我们每个人应该每天拿出几分钟时间，让自己享受10到15分钟的假期。白日做梦对你的身心健康有益，你会发现这一小小的廉价的时间投资最终带来的是一个更有创造性、更富想象力、更心满意足和更踌躇满志的你。它常常便我们更充分地意识到生活的紧张激烈，这当然大大有助于增加生活的兴奋和乐趣。 To Sleep, Perchance to Dream 睡觉，偶尔做做梦 
这么说，你今天早上醒来时心情很糟。唔，或许你的特别的梦中人昨夜未曾入梦来，或许只是没有足够的人进入你的梦境。 If that sounds like far-fetched fantasy, consider these interesting findings that have emerged from eight years of sleep and dream research at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio: 如果那听起来像靠不住的空想，想一想在俄亥俄州辛辛那提的退伍军人管理医院进行的对睡眠和做梦的八年研究中发现的有趣结果吧。 While sleep affects how sleepy, friendly, aggressive, and unhappy we feel after awakening, feelings of happiness or unhappiness depend most strongly on our dreams. 虽然睡眠影响我们醒来后是否疲倦、友好、好胜、不开心，感觉开心与否主要在于我们的梦。 Each of us has a special dream character, a type of person whose appearance in our dreams makes us feel happier when we awake. What we dream at night isn't as important to how we feel in the morning as the number of people who appear in our dreams. The more people, the better we feel. 我们每个人都有一个特别的梦中人，一个在我们的梦中出现、醒来时使我们感觉更开心的人。在夜里梦到什么对于我们早上感觉如何并不比我们梦里出现的人数更重要。梦中人数越多，我们感觉越好。 
梦影响我们的情绪，我们的情绪进而影响我们的行为，一整天，我们情绪高昂亦或低落的行为总是密切相关。 During the past two decades, research has greatly expanded our knowledge about sleep and dreams. Scientists have identified various stages of sleep, and they have found that humans can function well on very little sleep, but only if they dream. Yet the true function of sleep and dreaming continues to elude precise explanation. 在过去的20年里，研究大大地扩展了我们对睡眠的梦的知识。科学家们已经可以识别不同的睡眠阶段，而且发现，人在睡眠很少的情况下，机体仍然很好的运转，但只是在睡眠时做了梦才如此。而睡眠和做梦真正的功能依然得不到准确的解释。 In 1970 Milton Kramer and Thomas Roth, researchers at the VA Hospital and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, respectively, raised this question: Do our moods in the morning relate in any way to our sleep and dreams the previous night?1970 年，VA医院和辛辛那提大学医学院的研究者米尔顿·克莱默和托马斯·罗斯，分别提出了这个问题：我们早晨的情绪与我们前一天夜里的睡眠和做梦有某种关系吗？ Human experience suggests that they do. Certainly we generally feel better after a good night's sleep. But Drs. Kramer and Roth sought a much more definitive answer. And that answer, though still evolving, is positive yes. 人们的经验表明它们是有关系的。当然，在一夜足睡的时候，我们一般会感觉良好。但是克莱默和罗斯医生发现了一个更明确的答案，虽然这个答案仍在逐步形成中，但答案确是肯定的。 Kramer and Roth began by seeking to determine whether one's mood differs between night and morning, and whether this is related directly to sleep. They found that there is a difference, and its is definitely related to sleep. Then they explored the various aspects of mood and their relationship to the various stages of sleep and dreaming. 克莱默和罗斯开始于探求一个人的情绪在早上和晚上是否不同，是否与睡眠有直接关系。他们发现确实是不同的，也确实与睡眠有关。接着，他们研究了情绪的不同方面和它们的睡眠和梦不同阶段的关系。 
一晚的好觉对我们的心情意味着什么？通常我们会更开心、不那么有攻击性、更困倦，而且令人感到有点吃惊的是，居然不那么友好。更困倦的容易解释，只是需要一点时间在醒来后使自己完全清醒。 But why should we feel less friendly? Here the researchers must speculate a little. They suggest the answer may be the lack of association with other humans during the period of sleep. 但为什么我们会感到不那么友好呢？这里研究者得做一些推测，他们认为答案可能是睡眠期间缺少与他人的交流。 Once the two doctors established scientifically what common sense and folk wisdom had long taught - namely, that there is link between sleep and how we feel - they set out to learn what parts of our mood are related to which specific parts of the sleep cycle. 两位医生一旦把常识和民间智慧长期教给他们的东西--即睡眠与我们的感觉之间有联系--科学地确定下来，他们就着手了解我们的情绪的哪些部分与睡眠周期的哪些具体部分有关。 Normal sleep is broken into five distinct parts - Stages 1 through 4, plus REM, an acronym for rapid eye movement. Much remains unknown about each of the five sleep stages. Most dreaming occurs during REM sleep, a period when the eyeballs move rapidly beneath the closed lids. And whether they remember or not, all adults dream, usually four to six times a night. 正常睡眠可划分为五个不同部分，从第一阶段到第四阶段，加上REM。每一个阶段都有许多人们未知的知识。大部分的梦发生在REM睡眠期间，眼球在紧闭的眼睑下快速移动。不管成年人是否记得，他们都做梦，通常一夜4到6次。 Three types of mood are strongly related to some specific stage of sleep. Our friendly, aggressive, and sleepy feelings all relate to Stage 2 sleep, which accounts for most of our total sleep hours. Our friendly and sleepy feelings, but not our aggressive feelings, are affected as well by Stages 3 and 4, and by how long it takes us to fall asleep. 三种情绪和睡眠的某一阶段紧密相关。我们友好的、有攻击性的、困倦和睡眠的某一阶段紧密有关。我们大部分的睡眠在第二阶段。我们友好的、困倦的、但没有攻击性的睡眠时间也受到第三、第四阶段以及我们多久才能入睡的影响。 
这就意味着如果你比平时睡得少些--在政党情况下需要多少睡眠，人与人之间是有很大差别的--你醒后就会更加友好、更有攻击性、少些困倦。 At this point, the doctors found themselves puzzled. They knew from their earlier work that sleep determines if people feel happier. Yet when they studied the various sleep stages, they found no correlation between sleep physiology and the unhappy mood. Clearly sleep made a difference, but that difference didn't relate to how much time one spent in each of the various sleep stages. 在这一点上，医生们自己也感到困惑。在他们以前的研究中，他们知道睡眠决定着人们是否会更高兴。然而，当他们研究各个睡眠阶段时，他们发现在睡眠的生理状况和忧郁的情绪之间没有关系。很显然，睡眠会带来差异，但是这种差异与人们花在每一睡眠阶段的时间长短没有关系。 The two researchers decided the key to whether we feel happy or unhappy after sleep must lie in sleep's psychological component - our dreams. So they began studying dream content - what dreamers dreamed and who appeared in their dreams - to see how this affected mood. 两位研究者断言，睡眠以后我们是否感觉高兴的关键肯定是取决于睡眠的心理构成部分--我们的梦。所以他们就开始研究梦的内容：人们梦到了什么、谁大梦中出现--来弄清楚梦会怎样影响到情绪。 Instead of sleeping through the night, volunteers now were awakened four times while in REM sleep. They were asked about such things as what their dreams were about; the sex, age, identity, and number of the people in their dreams; and what each person in a dream was doing. 参加试验的志愿者不能整夜睡眠，相反，在REM睡眠中，他们被唤醒四次，然后回答问题，如他们梦的内容、梦中人物的性别、年龄、身份和数量，以及梦中每一个的所作所为。 Interestingly, Kramer and Roth found that being awakened four times a night didn't make a difference in the volunteers' morning mood patterns. But they did find that who appears in a dream has a far greater influence on mood than what occurs in the dream. "Who affects all the moods," Kramer says, "but primarily the unhappy mood." 令人感兴趣的是，克莱默和罗斯发现一夜被唤醒四次并没有使志愿者早上的情绪模式发生改变。但他们却发现谁出现在梦中比梦里发生什么事对情绪具有非常大的影响。"梦中出现的人物影响着所有的情况，"克莱默说，"但首要的是不高兴的情绪。" 
结果是我们每一个人都有一个特殊的梦中人物，如果这个人出现在梦中，我们醒后就会感到很高兴。"对一般人来说，这个人可能是一位老太太，对另外一些人来讲，可能是一位年轻男子。" Who appears in your dream isn't the only important thing. The more people who appear in your dreams the happier you are on awakening. It's a case of the more the merrier. "The bad thing in a dream is to be alone; you feel worse," Kramer explains. "You can relate this to wakening psychology, where being alone leads to more unhappiness. There is something about interacting with people that produces happiness." 谁出现在你梦中并不是唯一重要的事情。梦中出现的人物越多，你醒来时就会更加高兴。它是一种梦中人愈多愈高兴的情况。"梦中如果你孤身一人，你的感觉就不会很好，"克莱默解释说，"你可以把这一点与人们睡醒时的心理联系起来，在刚睡醒的状态下孤单一人只会导致较多的不快。这是因为与人交际才能令人高兴。" A number of researchers have examined the relationship of mood and performance. The doctors also checked into this relationship, and they have found some interesting correlations. 一些研究人员已经探讨了情绪和行为的关系，医生们也深入研究了这种关系。而且他们已经发现了一些有趣的相互关系。 "We found that the more friendly, more aggressive, more clear-thinking, less sleepy, and surprisingly, the more unhappy you are, the better you perform. That last one - the unhappy - I can't explain," Kramer says. Moreover, the level of person's moods and the level of his or her performance rise and fall together throughout the day. 克莱默说："我们发现，人越友好、越有锐气、思维越清晰，也就越一困倦，令人惊奇的是，你越不高兴，但是活儿却干得越好。最后这种情况不高兴--我解释不了。"而且一个人情绪水平和他行为水平在一天中的上下波动总是一致的。 Initially the two VA researchers worked only with men, because the dreams of men are far easier to study. Men and women dream differently. Indeed, sex is the biggest factor in accounting for differences in the people activities, locations and feelings that occur in dreams. Dr. Kramer says, "When you compare men and women, you get a greater difference in dream content than when you compare, say, 20- and 60-year-olds, or black and white." 最初，退伍军人管理医院的研究只对男人进行了研究，因为男人的梦研究起来容易得多。男人的梦和女人的梦是不同的。的确，在解释梦中出现的人物、他们的活动、活动地点和他们的感觉差异时，性别是最重要的因素。克莱默医生说："但你对比男人和女人时，你会发现他们梦的内容有很大的不同，这种不同与你比较，比如20岁和60岁的人或者黑人和白人要大得多。" 
去年，退伍军人管理医院的研究者开始研究妇女的睡眠、做梦和情绪的关系。这项工作正在继续进行，但是一开始的发现有力地证实了他们在对男人研究时的发现。 "Overall, the women are just like men," Kramer says." 总的来说，男人和女人几乎没有什么两样，"克莱默说。
| 
