If you’ve ever woken from a nightmare in a cold sweat or woken with a start after a particularly unusual dream, chances are you’ve wondered just what the heck dreams are all about. Where do they come from and what on earth do they mean?
What type of dreamer are you?
It’s these questions that occupy the waking hours of Jennie Parker – an academic from the University of the West of England in Bristol. She’s been examining dreams and nightmares in all their forms in a bid to better understand our nocturnal experiences.
Her work has drawn heavily on the experiences of students at slumber who volunteer to chart their after-dark experiences in special ‘dream reports’. Using a sophisticated content analysis approach, Jennie has been able to break down the frequency of certain elements in each dream – from the social and sexual interactions to emotions and even the characters involved.
Her initial survey suggests that dreams are even more complex than had previously been thought with both men and women reporting a wide variety of emotions ranging from senses of loss, anxiety and panic in nightmares to much more pleasant sensations while asleep.
While many dreams were described as ordinary or mundane others were much more bizarre or exciting – although often the dreamer felt a little “detatched” from what was going on, observing the dream events rather than participating.
Pleasant dreams
Examining the results it soon became clear that dreams could roughly be divided into two key categories – pleasant and unpleasant.
“In unpleasant dreams the dreamer was victimised by dream events. Any self-negativity that occurred was reported in unpleasant dreams. Emotions were predominantly fearful, sad, or confused. Sexuality rarely occurred in unpleasant dreams (except as an act of violence),” explains Jennie.
Thank heavens for pleasant dreams then? Not necessarily.
“Aggression was often still present; the difference being that the dreamer was this time the aggressor. This suggests that aggression isn’t necessarily a predictor of dream pleasantness, rather it is the position of the dreamer within aggressive social interactions. The issue of control (being dominant or being powerless) was clearly evident in reports.”
Gender divisions
Delving deeper into the research there are some very clear differences between the dreams of men and women. While women often reported dreaming of other women, men dreamt far less about of other men favouring familiar characters and friends instead.
On the whole, UK women reported less rejection but more cases of verbal aggression in dreams than men, Perhaps as a result, they were also less likely to report showing affection or giving gifts to others in their dreams than men.
Men, on the other hand, reported far less aggression in their dreams than women. Although, when aggression did occur, it was more likely to be physical, and instigated by the dreamer themselves. Coincidentally, men rarely reported helping or protecting others in dreams.
There were cultural differences too – UK men and women reporting a much more positive ‘self-concept’ than respondents in the US.
Emotions
But what of the key question – why do we dream at all? Jennie reckons emotions play a key role: “It appears that the most active part of the brain during REM sleep is the part associated with processing emotional information. Therefore, I believe that dreams and nightmares serve an emotional processing function. The louder the emotion the more we need to attend to the issue”.
Interesting though Jennie’s research has been so far, she hopes that it may yet have some clinical merit too; “I am hoping to identify the different type of dreams that people with various types of mental distress have and how this manifest in their dream reports. I am particularly interested in addiction. This is in the hope of devising plans to work with their dreams that would help them in waking life”.
If you are interested in taking part in Jennie’s dream studies, please contact her through the University of the West of England, Bristol website.
