ABSTRACT

Sports Dreams: Manifestations of Cultural Experience as Dream Metaphors

Philip H. King, Ph.D.

Philip King is Professor of Quantitative Methods and Psychology at Hawaii Pacific University, and Vice-president of ASD. His research interests include dreams of health care professionals, dream orientation and dream content connections, and metaphoric manifestations of cultural experience in dreams

Summary of Presentation

Dreams of Americans with sports themes were analyzed. Existential themes included success and failure, grace and awkwardness, hope and despair, freedom, and opportunity. Sports dreams are a versatile domain for metaphoric messages related to the dreamer's life beyond sports, and are one example of the presence of cultural categories in dreams.

Learning Objectives.

• To understand cultural domains and how they appear in dreams.

• To understand how sports dreams present existential issues metaphorically.

• To understand the optimal conditions for cultural domain dreams appearing in dreams and furthering the dreamer's self-understanding.

Evaluation questions:

• What is a cultural domain and why might it appear as a context or setting in dreams?

• What are the major existential themes that appear metaphorically in sports dreams?

• What are the two waking conditions likely to facilitate the existence and usefulness of cultural domain dreams such as sports dreams?

Abstract 

As part of the continuity between waking consciousness and dream consciousness, social and cultural experience appears in dreams. A particularly interesting example of this phenomenon is the presence in dreams of sports activities. Sports serve a metaphoric function in embracing themes that transcend sports per se and speak to existential concerns.

In the present pilot study, 45 sports-related dreams from 11 subjects were content-analyzed. Among the themes appearing were participation, daring, success and satisfaction, failure and frustration, grace and awkwardness, hope and despair, freedom, opportunity and the lack thereof, and individual and group effort. Other themes included community and isolation, aging and mortality, altruism and generativity, work ethic and hustle, physical and mental striving, worry, hopefulness, anticipation and relief.

Sports dreams are well-suited to provide a wide range of themes presented metaphorically and communicating fundamental existential concerns and phenomenological themes. The very nature of sport involves, fundamentally, striving, the revelation of skill, competition, success and failure. Its physical nature promotes and provides for the expression of emotion. Its importance in American culture makes it a likely focus for dream plots and stories.

Sports is one example of a cultural domain and social activity that may find its way into dreams, providing fertile ground for the manifestation of existential messages in metaphoric form. Sports dreams are not unique in this regard. Other cultural domains - drama, dance, art, music, religious participation, school and workplace - can also manifest themselves in dreams in a similar fashion. Committed participation in a cultural pursuit and active use of dreams are optimal conditions for a person's finding existential meaning in dreams of that pursuit.

Cultures differ in the waking cultural domains that are valued and to which persons give their passionate commitment. Individual cultures change in this regard over time. Dreams analyzed cross-culturally and longitudinally may provide an interesting measure of the different ways in which cultural experience reveals itself in dreams, differs among cultures and changes over time, as well as how an attention to such dreams can instruct and support the dreamer along his or her life path.

References

Bulkeley, Kelly (Ed.) (1996) Among All These Dreamers: Essays on Dreaming and Modern Society. (Suny Series on Dream Studies)

Domhoff, G. W. (1996) Finding meaning in dreams: A Quantitative Approach. New York: Plenum Press.

Domhoff, G.W. (1999) "Drawing Theoretical Implications from Quantitative Studies of dream Content: Paper prepared for a panel entitled "The Dream 100 Years Later: New facts, new Theories," at the annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association, May 20, 1999, Washington, D.C.

Domhoff, G. W. (2000). "Ideas and Findings toward a Neurocognitive Theory of Dreams: Why Cognitive Scientists should notice and Emerging Synthesis in the Study of Dreams." Department of Psychology, University of California at Santa Cruz: unpublished manuscript.

Hall, C. (1953). The Meaning of Dreams. New York: Harper and Row.

Hall, C. and R. Van de Castle (1966). The Content Analysis of Dreams. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft.

King, P. (1992). "Dream Attributes, Dream Orientation, Culture and Social Experience."

Paper presented at the ninth annual international conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams, University of California at Santa Cruz.

King, P. (1995). "Stress, Trauma and Emotional Support as Factors in Dream Orientation." Paper presented at the twelfth annual international conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams, New York City.

King, P. (1996). "Experiential Factors in Dream Orientation." Paper presented at the thirteenth annual international conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams, Oakland, California.

Van Deurzen, Emmy (2002) Existential Counselling and Psychotherapy in Practice (Sage Publications)

Yalom, Irvin (1980) Existential Psychotherapy (Basic Books)

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