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AriannahM's picture

dreams

I wrote my last paper about dreams and I was fascinated by what I found out. I think it is amazing that each of us have such different waking lives but surprisingly similar dream lives. “Although the variability of dream content is large, typical dream themes that occur quite often and are reported by many people can be identified (e.g. being chased, falling, flying, failing an examination, being unable to find a toilet or restroom)” (Ciric). These are the most common dream themes but themes also differ across gender. “Some major findings…have been: women’s dreams contain more explicitly mentioned emotions, more dream characters, especially familiar dream characters and show a higher incidence of indoor settings, household objects and references to clothing. Men’s dreams on the other hand, are characterized by more physical aggression, sexuality, achievement themes and the occurrence of weapons. Another gender difference is the proportion of male and female dream characters. Whereas male characters dominate men’s dreams (67%), the ratio is balanced in women’s dreams (48%)” (Piel). Although there are obviously differences, I am surprised at how similar they are. We are taught to think that we are unique and different, but how different can we really be to have similar dream states?

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