Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Kelly Bulkeley, Stephany Campanelli et al.
31 citations
Religions have long recognized lucid dreaming (LD) as an important conscious state, predating modern scientific study by millennia. Hindu texts over 2,000 years old divide consciousness into waking, dreaming (including LD), and deep sleep. Tibetan Buddhists practice Dream Yoga to recognize dreams, overcome fears, and control dream content. Islam regards LD as a valuable mental state for mystical experiences. Christian theologian Augustine described LD as a preview of the afterlife. Spiritism in the nineteenth century linked LD to out-of-body experiences. Abrahamic religions view dreams as communication with God, while Indian traditions cultivate self-awareness through LD induction techniques. These historical religious insights can inform current scientific research on LD phenomenology.
Poligrafi
December 20, 2023
Kelly Bulkeley
Digital analysis tools are accelerating dream research by enabling large-scale empirical studies. Using the Sleep and Dream Database, a free online archive, researchers can perform statistical analyses of survey responses, systematic word searches of dream reports, and comparative measurements against baseline frequencies. The paper presents basic empirical findings on patterns of perception, emotion, and social interaction in dreaming, and reflects on the interplay between dreaming and technology.
Oxford University Press eBooks
April 21, 2016
Kelly Bulkeley
Ritual healing through dreaming is a cross-cultural religious phenomenon. This chapter examines it through the case study of Aelius Aristides, a second-century Roman who recorded dreams at the temple of Asclepius, alongside examples from other traditions and theories from cognitive science and psychology of religion. The authors argue that religions can stimulate, via dream incubation rituals, a natural placebo effect that aids the body's innate capacities for healing, recovery, and self-repair. Special attention is given to the placebo effect and the power of specific interpersonal relationships to generate a healing response.
The Scribes of Sleep
July 4, 2023
Kelly Bulkeley
Dream journals of seven individuals reveal both common patterns and distinctive, unusual features unique to each dreamer. While the continuity hypothesis suggests dream content generally mirrors waking emotional concerns, discontinuities—uncommon elements—can signal personal meaning and creative imagination. Blind analysis experiments using word-usage frequencies successfully infer waking-life concerns from dream reports, demonstrating that atypical dream features offer insight into individual psychology.
The Scribes of Sleep
July 4, 2023
Kelly Bulkeley
Dream journals of seven individuals are analyzed using a word-search method from the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), which organizes dream content into forty categories across eight classes (Perception, Emotion, Characters, Movement, Social Interactions, Cognition, Culture, Elements). Word-usage frequencies are compared to SDDb baselines from a large representative set of ordinary dreams, allowing determination of whether an individual's dream patterns are high, low, or normal relative to typical dreams.
Pastoral Psychology
January 1, 2022
Kelly Bulkeley, Michael Schredl
In the wake of the 2020 protests after George Floyd's murder, an online survey of 4,947 American adults found that those who support the Black Lives Matter movement, are highly educated, or have high dream recall were most likely to dream about the protests. The dreams were anxious, fearful, and nightmarish, featuring themes such as George Floyd, participating in protests, threats to home, pandemic concerns, and conversations about BLM. The findings indicate that dreams, dream recall, and dream sharing vary by racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, and that dreams contain meaningful content tied to current events.
Dreaming (New York, N.Y.)
December 1, 2018
Kelly Bulkeley
An exercise in blind analysis of a 30-year dream series from a woman named Beverly used a digital word search template on four subsets of her 940 dreams (from 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016). Predictions about her waking life based on word usage frequencies in her dreams were made; of 26 predictions, Beverly confirmed 23 as accurate. Correct inferences included aspects of her emotional temperament, preoccupations, relationships, financial concerns, physical health, and cultural interests, especially religion and spirituality. These continuities between dreaming and waking life support claims that dream content patterns have meaningful connections with people's waking concerns, interests, and activities.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
October 1, 2017
Kelly Bulkeley
Scientific dream research has promising frontiers in three areas: neuroscientific studies of brain-mind activity during sleep, especially lucid dreaming; systematic analysis of large dream report collections from diverse populations; and psychotherapeutic exploration of personal and collective meaning in individual dream experiences. Several books on sleep and dreaming science are recommended for further study.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
October 1, 2017
Steve Paulson, Deirdre Barrett, Kelly Bulkeley et al.
Dreams may be more than random neural noise; they can offer insights into daily life and deeper self-understanding. A panel of experts—psychologist Deirdre Barrett, dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley, and sleep/dream medicine specialist Rubin Naiman—discussed the origins, functions, and meanings of dreams. They considered whether universal symbols exist across cultures, why some dreams are memorable while others are not, and how wisdom traditions have long treated dreams as sources of revelation. The conversation challenged purely neuroscientific views that dismiss dreams as purposeless, instead exploring their psychological and spiritual significance.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2014
Kelly Bulkeley
A digital word search method using 40 categories built into the Sleep and Dream Database website can accurately identify distinctive patterns in dream content. Applied to four classic dream sets—the male and female Norm dreams from Hall and Van de Castle, the Engine Man dreams from Hobson, and the Barb Sanders Baseline 250 dreams from Domhoff—the approach replicated findings from previous labor-intensive analyses. The results demonstrate that word search technologies are compatible with traditional methods of dream content analysis, offering greater accuracy, objectivity, and speed.