California Women and Their Dreams: A Historical and Sub-Cultural Comparison of Dream Content

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of sub-cultural membership on women's dream content, and time trends in dreaming over the past forty years. Dream series anonymously collected from 100 women attending the University of California, Berkeley, were scored for characters, emotions, setting, aggression, friendliness and sexuality. Each subject voluntarily reported five consecutive dreams on standardized forms. A demographic questionnaire administered to subjects and non-subjects found no differences. Randomized dream reports were scored twice by two independent raters. The current sample reported more emotions, more aggression, and more victimization by females than the normative, 1950 sample. Asian-American content was compared with non-Asian-American content and the 1950 data. Asian-American women reported similar aggressive patterns to those of the 1950 sample, and more unfamiliar settings than non-Asian-Americans. An integrative explanation of the results is presented, and suggestions for future dream content research are made.

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