Mark: The College Student

Mark's dreams (not his real name) show how interesting results can be obtained with normal young people in high school or college. He first wrote down 40 of his dreams in the summer after he graduated from high school, then another 20 during a six-week period in his junior year in college, and then another 50 a year after he graduated from college. His dreams have three striking features that make this series of interest to us.

H-profile of Mark compared to the Male Norms

As shown in the above h-profile, the most unusual finding for Mark is his very low male/female percent of 38/62, almost a complete reversal of the male norm of 67/33, something we rarely see in an individual series. Second, Mark has a higher percentage of familiar characters. Third, he is very low on aggression. Do these findings fit with his life?

Mark reports that his father died when he was very young, and that he did not have a stepfather until years later. The vast majority of his friends are women and his only close family members are his mother and grandmother. He does not like men as much as women and does not form close friendships with them. He spends most of his time with a few close friends and is an unaggressive person. Overall, he is a low-key normal person. He is of interest to us because of the way in which our coding system picked up the ways in which he is an atypical male.

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