This study examines the frequency and characteristics of overt dreams of dying among healthy young adults. Dreams of dying are found to be a rare but distinctive content category; most surprisingly they are overwhelmingly pleasant dreams. Slightly more than half of these accounts involve a lengthy afterlife sequence, and may best be interpreted as symbolizing other psychological changes. The remainder of the dreams are more focused on the process of death, and seem to illustrate the struggle to achieve an acceptance of mortality. Death dreams of healthy young people are also found to have some distinctive differences from those previously described among the terminally ill.
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