Dream content: Individual and generic aspects.

Dream reports from normal subjects cannot reliably identify the individual dreamer. Judges asked to group dream reports by their authors performed at chance levels, indicating that dreams may share more common features than unique signatures. When personal identifiers such as names and gender of friends and family are removed, dream reports do not reveal the dreamer's identity. The findings suggest that beyond using dreams to understand individuals, they also reveal shared or generic aspects of human consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Dream reports were collected from normal subjects in an effort to determine the degree to which dream reports can be used to identify individual dreamers. Judges were asked to group the reports by their authors. The judges scored the reports correctly at chance levels. This finding indicated that dreams may be at least as much like each other as they are the signature of individual dreamers. Our results suggest that dream reports cannot be used to identify the individuals who produced them when identifiers like names and gender of friends and family members are removed from the dream report. In addition to using dreams to learn about an individual, we must look at dreams as telling us about important common or generic aspects of human consciousness.