A cross-cultural comparison of typical dreams among Naxi and Han Chinese dreamers.

The present study is a cross-cultural comparison of typical dreams among Naxi and Han Chinese dreamers. The research is based on 369 interviews (174 Naxi and 195 Han Chinese) combined with responses to the Typical Dreams Questionnaire. The results indicate that although dream themes are universal and reproducible, their frequency and significance are influenced by cultural tradition, geographical environment, and other factors. In addition, Naxi women were found to remember their dreams more often than Naxi men do, and Naxi people appear to recall their dreams more often than Han people do. Among the themes that Naxi people dream of, “snakes” figured most frequently, whereas other dream themes, such as “falling” and “a dead person is alive,” ranked highly among both Naxi and Han participants, which is consistent with other studies. However, this study found that “eating delicious foods” ranked higher among both groups of participants, which may be influenced by Chinese cultural traditions and customs. Overall, the conclusions of this study suggest that we should understand dreams from three levels: the individual unconscious, the cultural unconscious, and the collective unconscious. This means that the clinical practice of psychological counseling, in particular, should work not only on the basis of individual experience but also at the level of cultural archetypes and the cultural unconscious. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Dreaming - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research