Dream Fact and Real Fiction: The Realization of the Imagined Self
Anthropology of Consciousness March 1, 1999 Lain Edgar
Personal identity and consciousness are shaped through the social and cultural contexts in which dreams are narrated and interpreted. An ethnographic study of dreamwork groups in the U.K. shows that dream symbolism, narration, and interpretation are culturally constructed, and that both dreamwork and guided fantasy allow individuals to represent and invent their sense of self through socially informed imaginative content.