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The DreamResearch.net Dream Library: Useful Articles on Dreams

This "library" contains published and unpublished papers in the research tradition established by psychologist Calvin S. Hall. They are meant for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and dream researchers, with the hope that the papers will be of use to them in formulating research projects or adopting a theoretical framework. The following paragraphs present a brief overview of the types of papers to be found here.

There are three "classic" papers by Hall (1947, 1953a, 1953b) that present his "thematic" method for studying a series of dreams, as well as his theoretical ideas about dreams and about "symbols" in dreams (i.e., they are really the same as waking metaphors).

There is also a "classic" paper by one of Hall's students, Walter J. Reis (1951), showing that free associations are not necessary to understand dreams if you have 20 or more dreams from a person. (There is a more recent study, not included in this library, that comes to the same conclusion. See Carol Popp, Lester Luborsky, and Paul Crits-Christoph, "The Parallels of the CCRT from Therapy Narratives with the CCRT from Dreams," in Lester Luborsky and Paul Crits-Christoph, Understanding Transference, Basic Books, New York, 1992.) These findings are important because they show that scientific work can be done with dreams outside a clinical situation and without information from the dreamer.

The library also has several recent (1998 and later) papers by either G. William Domhoff or by Domhoff's former students. Most of these papers present systematic empirical findings. They demonstrate the kind of studies that are possible with the method of quantitative content analysis explained on this Web site. Other papers in the library by Domhoff explain the method of content analysis in more detail or suggest the theoretical implications of findings based on this method.

Finally, there are several papers that critique writings by well-known dream theorists, such as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, J. Allan Hobson, and Ernest Hartmann, or a popular dream writer, Patricia Garfield. They are meant as one point of view in an ongoing dialogue, and are not likely to be convincing to those who adhere strongly to the particular viewpoint that is being critiqued. These critiques will be of greatest interest to those who are in the process of comparing different approaches to dreams, or who are deciding what research approach to take in studying dreams.


Books by Bill Domhoff



Our published articles


Our unpublished articles


Sources by other authors


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