Clocks in Dreams: Analysis of a Long Dream Series

Clocks appear in only 0.74% of a single male dreamer's series of 12,476 dreams, and clocks owned by the dreamer in waking life are especially rare in his dreams. The variety of contexts in clock dreams extends beyond the dreamer's time management. The low frequency may reflect novelty: regularly repeated waking-life experiences tend not to appear often in dreams. Studying everyday objects like clocks could refine models of waking-dreaming continuity.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Many dream content analytic studies focus on dream characters, animals, social interactions and so on, but they rarely analyze the frequency of everyday objects in dreams. In the present paper, the frequency and phenomenology of clock dreams in a dream series of 12,476 dreams of a single male dreamer was analyzed. The clock dreams (0.74% of all dreams) show a variety of contexts not only related to the time management of the dreamer within the dream. Interestingly, clocks that belong to the dreamer in waking life occurred very rarely in his dreams. Given that keeping time schedules and appointments in waking life is of importance to almost everyone, the low frequency of clock dreams might be explained by novelty, that is, waking-life experiences that repeat themselves regularly do not show up in dreams that often. Thus, studying everyday objects such as clocks in dreams might help refine the current models describing the continuity between waking and dreaming.