Dream researchers have developed various procedures to record and in-
terpret the content of our dreams (Domhoff, 1996, 1999; Hill, 1996).
Sometimes sleepers are awakened wh en physiological measures indicate
they are probably dreaming. Other investigators rely on participants to re-
cord their dreams first thing in the morning in diaries they keep next to their
beds. Still others simply ask participants to describe a recent dream or a re-
current dream.
Consistent with Freud ’s intuition, investigators using a variety of methods
find the content of our dreams is not random. Although there may be no ap-parent explanation for some of the bizarre material that makes its way into
our nighttime productions, there is evidence that dream content is often influ-enced by the fears, problems, and issues that capture our thoughts before we
go to bed (Domhoff, 2001; Foulkes & Cavallero, 1993). One team of research-
ers compared the dreams of Palestinian children who lived under two very dif-ferent circumstances (Valli, Revonsuo, Palkas, & Punamaki, 2006). Children
living in the Gaza Strip during the time of the study had experienced years of
violence and ever-present danger. In contrast, Palestinian children living in theGalilee area of Israel had a relatively peaceful existence. Dream reports re-
vealed that the children living under constant stress had more dreams than the
other children. Moreover, a higher percentage of the stressed children ’s dreams
included threatening events, and they experienced more threatening events per
dream than the children who lived in a less stressful world. Clearly, the chil-
dren’s dreams at night reflected the fears they faced during the day.
But what about unconscious conflicts? Can issues we are not consciously
aware of also make their presence known in our dreams? Some researchfindings suggest they can. Consider a series of investigations comparing how
often male and female characters appear in dreams. Think of a recent dream
of your own. Were there more male or female characters in your dream? The
answer will depend in part on your own gender. Several investigations findthat women typically have an equal number of male and female characters
in their dreams. However, despite stereotypes about men dreaming only of
beautiful women, in truth men are much more likely to dream about malecharacters (Hall, 1984; Hall & Domhoff, 1963). As shown in Table 4.1,
this difference is found at all ages and in nearly every culture. The combined
findings of all these studies suggest that males make up about 50% of thecharacters in women ’s dreams, but about 65% of the characters in men ’s
dreams.
But why are nearly two thirds of the characters in men ’s dreams other
males? One explanation relates back to the Oedipus complex and its female
counterpart, the Electra complex (Hall, 1984). According to Freudian theory,
men never completely overcome their conflict with their fathers. Because someof these feelings are displaced onto other males, men typically experience more
conflict with the men they encounter than do women. If men are preoccupied
with this conflict at an unconscious level, as a psychoanalytic psychologistmight guess, then this preoccupation should surface in the form of male char-
acters in their dreams.Dream Interpretation 71