Nightmares and Night Terrors
Every single nightmare is structurally identical. As I mentioned with my idea of Archetypal Chaining, attention stays on it's current focal point until a fresh manifestation captures the attention and becomes the new focal point. Which things capture our attention or are more prone to capturing attention depends on a factor I call Novelty. Novelty is anything that draws an inordinate amount of attention.
Scary or dangerous things understandably fall under the category of novel attention attractors. So, what happens is something scary or dangerous captures the attention. Because it is a novel focal point, it draws more attention than normal. Now, according to my first two rules of dream control, this will make the focal point both more real AND more complex, increasing the threat. Because the threat is now greater, it's level of novelty has increased, so it demands even more attention, causing it to grow even further out of control. On and on in a vicious cycle.
You could compare it to how things annoy us in the waking world. The more you let something bother you, the more attention you give it, the more it will bother you. It's also important to note you can fall into this same type of whirlpool attention trap with positive imagery. New agers will try to tell you that's a good thing, but a prison is still a prison no matter how nice it is.
NIGHT TERRORS, on the other hand are a different beast entirely. In my opinion, they are cognitive dissonance withing the mind's spatial relation systems. Night Terrors typically occur when children are start to become more active in exploring the world, with a common relapse in the teens when they are all gangly arms and legs, and again have to make adjustments to their spatial relations systems.
These structural collapses of archetypal systems are typified by dissonant pairings, concepts that are intricately tied to one another like Big/Small, Fast/Slow, Near/Far, which lose that something which keeps both ends of the scale separate. You have big and small coexisting in the same place, and it's the most terrible thing you can imagine. Also very common is this god awful feeling of slowness that feels like insanity or having your soul ripped out (metaphorically speaking).
I expect there's a veritable plague of night terrors out there right now with today's strong digital influence on kids. They just aren't getting the experiential time dealing with spatial relations in the real world to strengthen those systems. The solution to cure night terrors in children is to get them active and engage their sense of spatial relations.
