Zeo Sleep Data and the Ur-Patterns of Dream Content
So far I’ve done word search analyses on 21 series of dreams from individuals and 16 sets of dreams from large groups of people, totaling well over 10,000 dream reports. It’s too early to say anything definite about the patterns that have emerged from this data. More reports need to be gathered from a wider variety of people, and more improvements need to be made in the SDDb word search template.
Still, a few basic patterns have appeared in nearly all the collections I’ve studied. I’m calling them ur-patterns because they seem to represent deep structural elements of dream content (ur- as in “original” or “primal”). That’s my general hypothesis, anyway, and each new set of dreams is another chance to test and refine it.
Here are the ur-patterns I’ve identified so far:
Just released: The essential guide to dream education
Do you dream of Obama?
Coming Soon! Teaching Jung
Due in Fall 2011 from Oxford University Press
Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination
I’ve just read an excellent new book, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination, by Amira Mittermaier (University of California Press, 2011). The following two paragraphs are from a review that will appear in the next issue of the IASD magazine Dream Time. Important new books on dreams and Islam have been coming out faster than this reviewer can keep up with them. In... [Read more of this post]
Comparing Dream Content and Zeo Sleep Data
An advanced feature of the Sleep and Dream Database is the ability to analyze dream content using sleep stage measurements from the Zeo Sleep Manager as search constraints. So far, the SDDb has only one series with both dream reports and Zeo sleep data from the same nights (KB DJ 2009-2010). In coming months I will be pursuing new studies with other participants using a combination of dream journaling... [Read more of this post]
Religion and Critical Psychology: Comments on Jeremy Carrette’s Latest Book
This is a response I wrote to Religion and Critical Psychology: Religious Experience in the Knowledge Economy (Routledge, 2007) by Jeremy Carrette, a Professor of Religious Studies at University of Kent, England. We just held a session on Jeremy’s book at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in San Francisco, with additional responses from Ann Taves and Bonnie Miller-McLemore. I... [Read more of this post]
Dream Interpretation in Christianity: A Brief History
This article was originally written for The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception. The editors asked for a revised entry focusing on modern Europe and America, so I’m posting this piece as a short (<1000 words) general survey of the history of dream interpretation in Christianity. Dreams and dream interpretation play a variety of roles in the Bible. They reveal God’s presence and... [Read more of this post]
The Art and Science of Dreaming
Why do we have dreams? Where do they come from? What, if anything, do they mean? These mysterious questions have puzzled humankind since the earliest days of history. The best answers, I suggest, come from integrating the insights of art and science. Dreaming is rooted in the physical workings of our brains, and it expresses our highest spiritual yearnings and deepest psychological concerns. ... [Read more of this post]
The Dreams and Nightmares of Harry Potter
More than four hundred million people, most of them children and teenagers, have read the Harry Potter novels of J.K. Rowling, immersing themselves in a fantastical world in which broomsticks fly, portraits talk, wizards cast spells–and dreams reveal honest emotional truths. Rowling’s hugely popular stories about the magical education of young Harry Potter abound with dream experiences that... [Read more of this post]
Children’s Dreams: A Word Search Analysis (part 5)
From numbers to narrative: The SDDb makes it easier than ever to combine quantitative and qualitative modes of dream research. It’s possible to look only at numbers when studying dreams, just as it’s possible to look only at their narrative qualities. But now that digital archives provide the ability to do both in a variety of creatively coordinated ways, there’s no reason you have to choose... [Read more of this post]
Children’s Dreams: A Word Search Analysis (part 4)
To summarize the results of the word search analysis so far: The dreams of this group of 622 children ages 8-18 have more references to family, animals, and fantastic beings, more happiness and sadness, and more flying as compared to the Hall and Van de Castle “norm dreams” of young adults. As mentioned earlier, it took less than half an hour to search all the dreams for the 40 word categories. ... [Read more of this post]
