Am J Psychiatry 1976; 133:778-781
Copyright © 1976 by American Psychiatric Association
Do dreams have meaning? An empirical inquiry
M Kramer, R Hlasny, G Jacobs and T Roth
Three judges attempted to sort randomly selected dreams of normal college
students and schizophrenic patients according to dreamer, night of
occurrence, and sequential order within a night. Sorting was successful at
statistically significant levels (which differed for the two groups) for
all but the third task. The authors conclude that dreams are, as depth
psychologists have assumed, orderly nonrandom events and that they reflect
day-to-day changes in the life of an individual. They note that further
work is needed to determine whether there is order among dreams of a given
night.
