ABSTRACT

"The Secret History of Sexual Dreaming"

Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
The Graduate Theological Union. 

Kelly Bulkeley teaches religion and psychology at the Graduate Theological Union and is the author and editor of several books on dreams, including Transforming Dreams, Visions of the Night, An Introduction to the Psychology of Dreaming, The Wilderness of Dreams, and the forthcoming Dreams of Healing and The Evolution of Wonder.

Summary of Presentation

The vivid sexual images and feelings experienced in dreams have fascinated, disturbed, and scandalized people throughout history. Though notoriously difficult to study, sexuality plays an enormously important role in human dreaming. This presentation will look at evidence from religious studies, anthropology, depth psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and my own research to sketch out a "secret history" of sexual dreaming.

Learning Objectives.

• To learn about sexuality in dreaming

• To learn about gender differences in dreaming

• To learn about historical and cross-cultural dream research

• To learn about cognitive neuroscientific dream research

Abstract 

The vivid sexual images and feelings experienced in dreams have fascinated, disturbed, and scandalized people throughout history. Though notoriously difficult to study, sexuality plays an enormously important role in human dreaming. This presentation will look at evidence from religious studies, anthropology, depth psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and my own research to sketch out a "secret history" of sexual dreaming. The presentation will start with a consideration of sexual dreams in different cultures through history, from ancient Greece and India to early Christianity, Islam, and the indigenous cultures of the Americas. Following that will be a discussion of the crucial role of sexuality in the dream theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, with a consideration of the transference/counter-transference issues that arise in psychotherapeutic engagements with sexual dreams. Then will come a discussion of what current research in cognitive neuroscience can tell us about sexuality generally and sexual dreaming in particular. With all that material as a context, the presentation will then offer results from my own research on sexual dreaming using data gathered from surveys, interviews, and dream journals and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods. This research sheds new light on several important questions, including the following: How does sexual dream content differ between men and women? Why do people so frequently have dreams of infidelity or adultery? Why do sexual dreams so often involve the breaking of social taboos? Are people morally responsible for their sexual behavior in their dreams? Is there any evolutionary advantage gained by the regularity of vivid sexual dreams?

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