A multivariate comparison was made among fifty-two recurrent, past-recurrent, and nonrecurrent dreamers aged eighteen to twenty-one. The participants completed measures of well-being and collected a fourteen-day sample of their own remembered dreams. Multivariate analysis showed that recurrent dreamers scored low on psychological well-being and reported more negative dream content. As was true in an earlier study, a single psychometric dimension, which we call psychological well-being, discriminated between the recurrent dream group and the other two groups over the entire set of well-being and dream content variables. As was true in two previous studies, dream archetypality was negatively correlated with a measure of neuroticism. We conclude that in both late teenagers and older adults, recurrent dreams occur in times of stress, are accompanied by negative dream content, and are associated with a deficit in psychological well-being.
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