ABSTRACT

Created Dreams – The Use and Function of Dreamscapes in Film and Literature

Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.
The Graduate Theological Union

Tracey Kahan, Ph.D.
Santa Clara University. 

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. Tracey Kahan is Chair of the Department of Psychology at Santa Clara University. Her research focuses on different modes of consciousness and cognitive processing, and she has written several articles in the journal Dreaming and elsewhere about dreams, lucidity, metacognition, and memory.

Summary of Presentation

This presentation will report the findings of a study of 22 dream journals kept during the Fall of 2001. Analysis of the dreams containing explicit incorporations of imagery related to September 11 and its aftermath indicates that dreaming is meaningfully related not just to purely private concerns but to broader social/political events as well.

Learning Objectives.

• To learn about the literature on dream incorporations

• To learn about the impact of September 11 on dream content

• To learn about the social dimensions of dreaming

• To learn about different methods of studying dream content

Evaluation questions:

Abstract 

This presentation will report the findings of a study of 22 dream journals kept during the Fall of 2001. Analysis of the dreams containing explicit incorporations of imagery related to September 11 and its aftermath (e.g., terrorists, hijacked airplanes, Osama bin Laden, etc.) indicates that dreaming is meaningfully related not just to purely private concerns but to broader social/political events as well. The dream reports will be analyzed in terms of their manifest content, narrative structures, cognitive and metacognitive features, and correlations to self-reports from the subjects concerning their emotional and behavioral reactions to the events of September 11 and its aftermath. One question to be examined is whether dreams with clear incorporations of September 11 themes have distinct qualities of awareness as compared to dreams without such content. Do dreams with explicit images of terrorism have less self-reflection (because of overwhelming fear) or more self-reflection (because of heightened vigilance)? The results of this study will cast new light on this and other questions relating to the profound psychological impact of a major public event like September 11.

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