This paper offers both an intertextual method for analyzing dreams and a model of fantasy processes in culture. The method consists in interpreting a dream in light of other narratives in a culture that share a motif with it. There is a spectrum of tales in cultures, ranging from founding myths rooted in the political realm to the highly personal proto-narratives we dream. I argue that narrative motifs from stories that circulate in public life move into people’s dreams, where these motifs represent shared meanings. In dreams, motifs are combined in novel ways; these combinations are, in effect, thought about these meanings. The narrative spectrum, together with this symbolic traffic, comprises a cultural fantasy system that is compelled by socially stylized desires and shared anxieties rooted in historical experience. The method and the model are explicated and illustrated through the analysis of four Samoan dreams from a larger collection.
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