Analysis of a large sample of diary dreams—how typical are these typical dreams?

Typical dreams are defined as dreams with similar contents reported by a high percentage of dreamers. Up to now, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires, indicating that the rank order of 55 typical dream themes is quite stable over different sample populations....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSomnologie : Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin = Somnology : sleep research and sleep medicine Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 107 - 112
Main Authors Mathes, J., Schredl, M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.06.2014
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Cardiology
Diaries
Dreams
Hypotheses
Internal Medicine
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Neurology
Original Contribution
Otorhinolaryngology
Pneumology/Respiratory System
Psychology
Questionnaires
Students
Canada
China
Germany
Traumvielfalt
Sleep
Typische Träume
Continuity hypothesis
Trauminhalt
Dream content
Dream diversity
Kontinuitätshypothese
Typical dreams
Schlaf
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Summary:Typical dreams are defined as dreams with similar contents reported by a high percentage of dreamers. Up to now, the frequencies of typical dream themes have been studied with questionnaires, indicating that the rank order of 55 typical dream themes is quite stable over different sample populations. The study presented here is the first to look at the frequencies of typical dream themes in a large sample of diary dreams reported by 425 students (321 women, 64 men; mean age 23 years). Overall, almost all typical dream themes were found in the diary dreams, even though some themes occurred very rarely. The rank correlation between diary data and questionnaire data is relatively high, but for some typical dream themes like “Trying again and again to do something” and “Falling” the ranks differed considerably. Future research should adopt various ways of identifying typical dream themes (e.g. qualitative analysis of large dream samples, themes dreamers themselves identify as typical) and develop a more precise definition for each theme. This would be the prerequisite for empirical studies investigating the question why these dream themes are typical, i.e. how these dreams are related to the waking-life experiences of the dreamer.
ISSN:1432-9123
1439-054X
DOI:10.1007/s11818-013-0653-6