Do People Believe That Their Dreams are Important and Meaningful?

In a recent research study, the following question was asked and investigated: Do people believe their dreams are important? As a result, some interesting findings emerged. In the study (King & DeCicco, 2000) the majority of participants stated that they believed that their dreams contained important and relevant information. Furthermore, the most frequent belief was that dreams contain information about relationships.

Given that more than 85% of dreams in general involve characters, and these characters can be linked directly to the dreamer's waking life (DeCicco, unpublished data), the relationship between dreams and waking day relationships appears very important. Furthermore, research on the meaning of dreams has found that waking day relationships was in fact a key meaning reported with dreams (DeCicco & Higgins, 2009). The finding that people believe their dreams to be important and believe them to be mainly about relationships implies that this link is being made, even if somewhat unconsciously. This now clears the path for future research on dreams and relationships to develop more fully and to bring a better understanding of this dimension of dreaming.

Happy New Year!

2010 offers a new year of dreaming. With every new year comes the opportunity to set intentions and create new pathways for one's life. Though most people set intentions to lose weight, find a new job, find a life partner, etc. few set the intention to be more conscious of their dreams and to pay attention to their meaning. I would like to suggest a few intentions that may be set for 2010 in terms of dreaming:

1. Get a new dream journal and commit to writing them down for the year.

2. Learn 2 new dream interpretation techniques and use them throughout the year.

3. Make the commitment to bring dream discovery into waking life.

4. Join a local dream group.

5. Attend a dream workshop and ask a friend to join as well.

6.Google the website for the International Association for The Study of Dreams and get involved with the organization in some way.

7. Introduce others to dream work so they can benefit from it.


These are just suggestions that may get people thinking about adding dreams to their new year intentions. Along with weight loss, new partners and new jobs, of course!