The lack of thematic continuity in dreams with scene and plot discontinuities.

A central claim of Freudian dream theory—that dreams have thematic coherence even when scenes or plots shift abruptly—was tested by asking judges to distinguish intact dream reports from ones that had been cut at their discontinuities and spliced with segments from other people's dreams. Judges correctly identified which reports were intact only 57% of the time, barely above chance. Only 3 of 20 reports were reliably scored correctly, and one intact report was mis-scored by 80% of judges. Characters, locations, and objects helped judges, while psychoanalytic content and writing style did not. The authors conclude that apparent coherence in dreams likely arises from the interpreter's mind, not the dreamer's.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A central tenet of Freudian dream theory holds that there is thematic coherence within all dreams, even those containing scene and plot discontinuities. While other models support varying degrees of dream coherence, none address the question of how, or even whether, coherence can be identified in dreams with such discontinuities. Here, we objectively test the ability of judges to evaluate the coherence of individual dream narratives. Twenty reports with complete scene and plot discontinuities were collected, and half were cut apart at their discontinuities and their two halves spliced together with segments from dreams of other subjects. The remaining 10 reports were left intact. Judges correctly identified reports as intact or spliced only 57% of the time, a rate only slightly better than chance. Only 3 of the 20 reports, one intact and two spliced, were reliably scored correctly, while one intact report was mis-scored by 80% of the judges. Judges had no greater confidence in correct decisions than incorrect ones. Dream report features identified by the judges that were effectively used in scoring dreams included characters, locations and objects, while psychoanalytic content and writing style were least effectively used. In sum, we find no evidence that dream construction consistently results in identifiable thematic coherence. Rather, scene and plot discontinuities in many cases represent such complete breaks as to be unrecognizable. We conclude that the finding of continuity by those reading these reports reflects ineluctable synthetic activity in the mind of the dream researcher or analyst rather than in the mind of the dreamer. This paper is part of the Festschrift in honor of Dr. Robert Stickgold.