An Attempt at Matching Waking Events Into Dream Reports by Independent Judges

Teaching Dream Interpretation to Psychiatric Residents

Though the clinical and experimental literature suggests that discussing dreams with therapy patients can be beneficial in a variety of important ways, there appears to be a gap in educational opportunities for psychiatric residents regarding this process. To address this educational need at the authors' residency program, a class in psychodynamically oriented dream analysis was implemented, and data was collected in the form of learner surveys both before and after they took the course. The survey found that the level of importance placed on dream work, the comfort level in discussing dreams with patients, and the frequency with which dreams were discussed in sessions were all increased after taking the course. Our conclusion was that these preliminary results suggest that implementing a structured course on dream analysis may help to fill the educational gap.

Relationship Between Personality Types in MBTI and Dream Structure Variables

This study aimed to explore relationships between personality type variables and dream structure variables. In the questionnaire experiment (N = 410), we investigated associations between different personality variables in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire (MBTI) and various aspects of dreams in the Mannheim Dream questionnaire (MADRE). The MBTI has four dimensions. In the Extroversion/Introversion (E/I) dimension, I types dreamt more of emotional intensity and passive emotions than E types. In addition, I types may become more distressed in nightmares than E types. E types more frequently shared their dreams with others. In the Sensation/Intuition (S/N) dimension, N types had a more positive attitude toward dreams and can get more novel ideas and help from their dreams than S types. In the dream diary experiment (N = 47), we investigated whether the S/N dimension may influence waking events' incorporation into dreams. External judges decoded paired waking events and dream reports. N types had more metaphorical incorporation than S types. More specifically, N types had more metaphorical expressions in their dreams than S types. This result may be due to the different characteristics between S types and N types. It may provide support for the dream continuity hypothesis.

A Paradigm for Matching Waking Events Into Dream Reports

In this study, participants recorded their waking events (Personal significant events, PSEs/Major concerns, MCs) and dream reports for 7 days. These events and dreams were paired by the same day (216 PSEs-dreams pairs and 215 MCs-dreams pairs). Then participants were instructed to both find similar features (characters, objects, locations, actions, emotions, and themes) of their events-dreams pairs and give a match score of their events-dreams pairs. Besides, we proposed a method for independent judges to match waking events into dreams (the external ratings). The rating standard of the external-ratings was to look for similar behaviors between events and dreams. Based on this rating standard, three independent judges were instructed to rate participants’ events- dreams pairs. Firstly, we compared the two kinds of methods of self-ratings. Spearman correlations showed that the two methods were significantly correlated with each other. These results suggested that the sum of different kinds of similar features could be used to represent self-ratings reported of the degree of the correlation between a waking event and a dream. Regression correlations showed that for PSEs-dreams pairs, actions, emotions, and themes were similar features that affected the degree of the correlation between an event and a dream of the same day, and for MCs-dreams pairs, emotions, and themes were similar features that affected the degree of the correlation between an event and a dream of the same day. These results suggested that different kinds of similar features had different influence on the self-ratings’ evaluation for the degree of matching between waking event and dream. Secondly, we compared the rating results of the self-ratings and the rating results of the external-ratings. Spearman correlations showed that the results of the self-ratings were significantly correlated with the results of the external-ratings. So this study’s method for the external ratings may be suitable for future studies. Besides, as the external ratings of this study can rate dream metaphors, we also made a short discussion on dream metaphors. Future studies can use the method to explore dream metaphors.