Frequency of typical dream themes in most recent dreams: An online study.

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 and these have indicated 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 most recent dreams (N = 2853). Overall, all typical dream themes were found in the dream sample, even though some themes occurred vary rarely. The rank correlation between the present data and diary data elicited in another study is relatively high but, for some typical dream themes, the ranks differed considerably. Future research should adopt various ways of identifying typical dream themes (qualitative analysis of large dream samples, themes dreamers themselves identify as typical, etc.) and develop a more precise definition for each theme. This would be the prerequisite for studying why some dream themes are typical, that is, how these dreams are related to the waking-life experiences of the dreamer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Dreaming - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research