______________________________________________________ Dream Work: A Psychoanalytic Perspective
PSYCHOLOGY In a 2010 study examining the meaning and content of dreams, researchers used sophisticated quantitative methods to organize dream data [26]. They hypothesized that dream content could be read in a way that would accurately reveal the dreamer’s daytime interests, personality traits, aspects of relationships, and overall emotional well-being. They predicted that dreams would echo waking life and that their meaning could be found by examining manifest content (i.e., the dream as recalled by the dreamer) without additional interpretation. The investi- gators examined dreams using a combination of the Hall/ Van de Castle (HVdC) system, a content coding system that provides normative data for the content of adult dreams, and a related but newer, computerized word-search method. The data were drawn from 192 reports collected in a journal over a two-year period, contributed by one dreamer, a male volunteer 23 years of age. The young man, a journalist, contacted one of the researchers and requested help interpreting his dreams. Dream reports, recorded in a Word document, were loaded into a computer dream bank and analyzed for content using HVdC categories and the researchers’ previously published word strings (40 categories of words and phrases known to capture dream content). One of the researchers was designated to make blind inferences from the data; he did not read the dreams nor was he privy to any biographical information about the dreamer, beyond age and sex. He produced 14 inferences about the dreamer based entirely on frequencies derived from the computer’s sorting. Each of these inferences was expressed in descriptive sentences and given to the dreamer for com- ment. For example, “He is socially active and competent, not reclusive or shy;” “He is an even-tempered person, not prone to emotional outbursts;” and “He is closer to his brothers G and J than brother C or sister A” [26]. The dreamer confirmed 12 of the 14 inferences. The researchers concluded that a blind analysis of dreams based only on the results of word searches could accurately predict many aspects of an individual’s wak- ing life (e.g., personality attributes, relationships, activities, cultural preferences) [26]. The researchers also included discussion of the erroneous inferences. One, a conclusion that the subject “has many nightmares,” based on a high frequency of words relating to fear, physical aggression, falling, animals, and death, was corrected by the dreamer this way: “One man’s nightmare is another’s fantasy…Where I’m stranded and fighting for my life on an island, I consider that a pleasant adventure dream and wake up stimulated” [51]. A second inference that the subject is equally close to his mother and father, based on equal fre- quencies of these two words was also disputed by the dreamer, who stated, “I’m much closer to my mother than my father. The dreams may be skewed because during the middle of the time frame that I was recording them I was spending much more time with my father than was normal” [26]. Finally, in a series of follow-up questions about whether anything obvious about his life or personality was absent from the inferences, the young man responded: “I’m a pretty adventurous guy, with a higher attraction to danger than a lot of people…Most people
who know me would use those facts as descriptors.” He also said, “If I were reading my dreams, I might be curious about why a variety of women come and go, without a mainstay. You might have been able to infer, ‘He doesn’t have a steady girlfriend.’” [26]. Certain findings from this study are of psychoanalytic inter- est. First, the recovery and quantification of manifest dream content appears to be achievable, and blind analysis of the data can lead to accurate inferences about the dreamer. Second, dream content, even with sophisticated methodology, does not yield to analysis easily. Third, analysis of manifest content alone in this case missed and misinterpreted significant mate- rial (i.e., the young man’s fondness for danger), led away from an important truth (i.e., his closeness to his mother), and left other matters in obscurity (i.e., his lack of a steady girlfriend). Each of these was an area important to the dreamer. The limitations of manifest content analysis are consistent with Freud’s emphasis on hidden, latent material. A second study published in 2012 reported similar findings [27]. By applying the blind analysis and word-search method to 223 dreams from the diaries of a single volunteer subject, the researcher was able to produce 15 inferences about her waking life, 11 of which were confirmed by the subject. This study again lends support to claims that dream content reflects waking interests and emotional concerns (i.e., the continuity hypothesis). A psychoanalytic viewpoint argues that manifest content reflects residue of the day as well as enduring emotional themes and conflicts [27]. NEUROPSYCHOLOGY Memory, an issue central to dream study, has been scrutinized by neuropsychologists who have explored the acceptability of data from dreamers’ reports, the best setting for collecting dream specimens, and the role of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in dreaming [28]. The goal of one meta-analysis was to determine whether the methods researchers use to study dream recall affect the outcome or whether recall is innately difficult [28]. Dream recall measured with self-rating scales found aver- age frequencies of two to three dreams per week; however, the results were not consistent. (This is partly because the term “recall” can be interpreted differently.) Indeed, when taking into account so-called “white dreams” (i.e., the certainty of hav- ing dreamed but not being able to recall the dream content), the rate of dream recall was an average of 5.1 dreams per week (up to 72.9% of spontaneous awakenings) [28]. This indicates that people are regularly aware of their dream experiences, irrespective of their ability to recall dream content. Dreaming during non-REM sleep has been confirmed in the presence of separate physiologic correlates. Consequently, dream researchers have been encouraged to turn away from sleep laboratories in favor of natural settings because intrusive elements (e.g., noise, electrodes, unfamiliar beds) can affect dreaming. Dream journals or simple instructions about how to recall dreams on waking have been shown to help a majority (90%) of sleep study participants increase dream recall within
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