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ABSTRACT

How Different Are Men and Women's Dreams?

David Kahn

 Neurophysiology Lab, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 74 Fenwood Road, Boston MA 02115

Eighteen women and seventeen men were asked to provide their dream reports over a two week period and to answer specific questions in a dream report log. The thirty-five subjects submitted 320 dream reports. The mean number of reports submitted by the eighteen women was 10.6, the mean number submitted by the 17 men was 7.6. Women's reports contained a mean of 259 words per report, men's 197 words per report. Women's reports contained a mean of 4.3 characters per report, men's 3.5 characters per report. None of these gender differences reached statistical significance.

The questions the subjects were asked were 1) how did subjects identify the dream characters they claimed to know in waking life, 3) what, if any, were the discrepancies between the dream character and its waking counterpart; and 4) what feelings, if any, were evoked in the subject by the subjects' dream characters.

Subjects were given the following choices to use as the basis of recognition of dream characters: appearance, behavior, logically deduced, the way the character made the subject feel, the way the character seemed to feel toward the subject, the way the character seemed to feel toward another dream character, the character's relationship with the subject, the character's social role, some other aspect of the character, some means of identification that the subject can't remember, and a "just knew" response by the subject. Differences in the way men and women recognized their dream characters did not reach statistical significance. These results support the hypothesis that gender does not significantly influence how characters are identified in our dreams.

For each known dream character that the subject believed represented someone in waking life, the subject was asked if the dream character differed from his or her waking counterpart. The choices were: no discrepancies, there were discrepancies but the subject can't remember what they were, the dream character differed from the person they represented in real life only in how sure the subject was of their identity in the dream, the character had a different name, was a blend of two or more known waking characters, the mortal status was different, the gender was different, the age was different, health status was different, appearance different, behavior different, feelings evoked were different, relationship to character differed, social role was different, or the dream character differed from that of the real person in waking life in some other way. Differences in discrepancies between dream characters and their real life counterparts as reported by men and women did not reach statistical significance. The results support the hypothesis that gender does not significantly influence the kinds of discrepancies we find in our dream characters.

Subjects were asked if the dream character evoked feelings in them. The choices were: No feelings evoked, feelings evoked but not sure what they were, fear, anxiety or worry, anger or irritation, sadness, shame or guilt, disgust, joy, happiness, or elation, affectionate feelings, erotic feelings, some other feelings. Differences in feelings evoked in men and women did not reach statistical significance. The results support the hypothesis that gender does not significantly influence the feelings that are evoked by our dream characters.