Typical Dreams: A Comparison of Dreams Across Cultures

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

                                    William Butler Yeats – from "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"   

Have you ever wondered how the content of your dreams differs from that of your friends? How about the dreams of people raised in different countries and cultures? It is not always easy to compare dreams of distinct individuals because the content of dreams depends on our personal experiences. This is why dream researchers have developed standardized dream questionnaires in which common thematic elements are grouped together. These questionnaires can be translated into various languages and used to survey and scientifically analyze the content of dreams. Open-ended questions about dreams might elicit free-form, subjective answers which are difficult to categorize and analyze. Therefore, standardized dream questionnaires ask study subjects "Have you ever dreamed of . . ." and provide research subjects with a list of defined dream themes such as being chased, flying or falling. Dream researchers can also modify the questionnaires to include additional questions about the frequency or intensity of each dream theme and specify the time frame that the study subjects should take into account. For example, instead of asking "Have you ever dreamed of…", one can prompt subjects to focus on the dreams of the last month or the first memory of ever dreaming about a certain theme. 

Any such subjective assessment of one's dreams with a questionnaire has its pitfalls. We routinely forget most of our dreams and we tend to remember the dreams that are either the most vivid or frequent, as well as the dreams which we may have discussed with friends or written down in a journal. The answers to dream questionnaires may therefore be a reflection of our dream memory and not necessarily the actual frequency of prevalence of certain dream themes. Furthermore, standardized dream questionnaires are ideal for research purposes but may not capture the complex and subjective nature of dreams. Despite these pitfalls, research studies using dream questionnaires provide a fascinating insight into the dream world of large groups of people and identify commonalities or differences in the thematic content of dreams across cultures. 

 The researcher Calvin Kai-Ching Yu from the Hong Kong Shue Yan University used a Chinese translation of a standardized dream questionnaire and surveyed 384 students at the University of Hong Kong (mostly psychology students; 69% female, 31% male; mean age 21). Here are the results: Ten most prevalent dream themes in a sample of Chinese students according to Yu (2008):

1. Schools, teachers, studying (95%)
2. Being chased or pursued (92 %)
3. Falling (87 %)
4. Arriving too late, e.g., missing a train (81 %)
5. Failing an examination (79 %)
6. A person now alive as dead (75%)
7. Trying again and again to do something (74%)
8. Flying or soaring through the air (74%)
9. Being frozen with fright (71 %)
10. Sexual experiences (70%)

The most prevalent theme was "Schools, teachers, studying". This means that 95% of the study subjects recalled having had dreams related to studying, school or teachers at some point in their lives, whereas only 70% of the subjects recalled dreams about sexual experiences. The subjects were also asked to rank the frequency of the dreams on a 5-point scale (0 = never, 1=seldom, 2= sometimes, 3= frequently, 4= very frequently). For the most part, the most prevalent dreams were also the most frequent ones. Not only did nearly every subject recall dreams about schools, teachers or studying, this theme also received an average frequency score of 2.3, indicating that for most individuals this was a recurrent dream theme – not a big surprise in university students. On the other hand, even though the majority of subjects (57%) recalled dreams of "being smothered, unable to breathe", its average frequency rating was low (0.9), indicating that this was a rare (but probably rather memorable) dream. 

How do the dreams of the Chinese students compare to their counterparts in other countries? Michael Schredl and his colleagues used a similar questionnaire to study the dreams of German university students (nearly all psychology students; 85% female, 15% male; mean age 24) with the following results: Ten most prevalent dream themes in a sample of German students according to Schredl and colleagues (2004):

1. Schools, teachers, studying (89 %)
2. Being chased or pursued (89%)
3. Sexual experiences (87 %)
4. Falling (74 %)
5. Arriving too late, e.g., missing a train (69 %)
6. A person now alive as dead (68 %)
7. Flying or soaring through the air (64%)
8. Failing an examination (61 %)
9. Being on the verge of falling (57 %)
10. Being frozen with fright (56 %)

There is a remarkable overlap in the top ten list of dream themes among Chinese and German students. Dreams about school and about being chased are the two most prevalent themes for Chinese and German students. One key difference is that dreams about sexual experiences are recalled more commonly among German students. 

 Tore Nielsen and his colleagues administered a dream questionnaire to students at three Canadian universities, thus obtaining data on an even larger study population (over 1,000 students). Ten most prevalent dream themes in a sample of Canadian students according to Nielsen and colleagues (2003):

1. Being chased or pursued (82 %)
2. Sexual experiences (77 %)
3. Falling (74 %)
4. Schools, teachers, studying (67 %)
5. Arriving too late, e.g., missing a train (60 %)
6. Being on the verge of falling (58 %)
7. Trying again and again to do something (54 %)
8. A person now alive as dead (54 %)
9. Flying or soaring through the air (48%)
10. Vividly sensing . . . a presence in the room (48 %)

It is interesting that dreams about school or studying were the most common theme among Chinese and German students but do not even make the top-three list among Canadian students. This finding is perhaps also mirrored in the result that dreams about failing exams are comparatively common in Chinese and German students, but are not found in the top-ten list among Canadian students. At first glance, the dream content of German students seems to be somehow a hybrid between those of Chinese and Canadian students. Chinese and German students share a higher prevalence of academia-related dreams, whereas sexual dreams are among the most prevalent dreams for both Canadians and Germans. However, I did notice an interesting aberrancy. Chinese and Canadian students dream about "Trying again and again to do something" – a theme which is quite rare among German students. I have simple explanation for this (possibly influenced by the fact that I am German): Germans get it right the first time which is why they do not dream about repeatedly attempting the same task. 

 The strength of these three studies is that they used similar techniques to assess dream content and evaluated study subjects with very comparable backgrounds: Psychology students in their early twenties. This approach provides us with the unique opportunity to directly compare and contrast the dreams of people who were raised on three continents and immersed in distinct cultures and languages. However, this approach also comes with a major limitation. We cannot easily extrapolate these results to the general population. Dreams about studying and school may be common among students but they are probably rare among subjects who are currently holding a full-time job or are retired. University students are an easily accessible study population but they are not necessarily representative of the society they grow up in. Future studies which want to establish a more comprehensive cross-cultural comparison of dream content should probably attempt to enroll study subjects of varying ages, professions, educational and socio-economic backgrounds. Despite its limitation, the currently available data on dream content comparisons across countries does suggest one important message: People all over the world have similar dreams.   

  References: 

 Yu, Calvin Kai-Ching. "Typical dreams experienced by Chinese people." Dreaming 18.1 (2008): 1-10. 

 Nielsen, Tore A., et al. "The Typical Dreams of Canadian University Students." Dreaming 13.4 (2003): 211-235. 

 Schredl, Michael, et al. "Typical dreams: stability and gender differences." The Journal of Psychology 138.6 (2004): 485-494.   

 Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on 3Quarksdaily.  


Yu, C. (2008). Typical dreams experienced by Chinese people. Dreaming, 18 (1), 1-10 DOI: 10.1037/1053-0797.18.1.1

“It Is An Opportunity For Great Joy”

I was about 12 years old when I found out that my grandfather was born on 12/12/12. If he were alive, he would be exactly 100 years old today. I found out about his birthday, when he came to stay with us in Munich for an eye surgery. He was a diabetic and had been experiencing deterioration in his vision. At that time, it was very difficult to find an eye surgeon in Pakistan who would be able to perform the surgery. My grandfather spoke many languages, such as Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, English, Arabic and some Sanskrit, but he could not speak German. His visit occurred during my school holidays, so I was designated to be his official translator for the doctor visits and his hospital stay.

On the afternoon before his surgery, we went to the hospital and I was filling out the registration forms, when I asked my grandfather about his birthday and he said 12/12/12. I was quite surprised to find out that he had such a wonderful combination of numbers, when the lady at the registration desk saw the date and asked me whether he was absolutely sure this was the correct date. I translated this for my grandfather and he smiled and said something along the lines of, “It is more or less the correct date. Nobody is exactly sure, but it is definitely very easy to remember”. I knew that I was supposed be a translator, but this required a bit more finesse than a straightforward translation. One cannot tell a German civil servant that a date is more or less correct. If we introduced uncertainty at this juncture, who knows what the consequences would be.

 I therefore paraphrased my grandfather’s response as, “Yes, it is absolutely correct!”

 She then said, “Eine Schnapszahl!”

 My grandfather wanted me to translate this, and I was again at a loss for words. Schnapszahl literally means Schnapsnumber and is a German expression for repeated digits, such as 33 or 555. The origin of the word probably lies in either the fact that a drunken person may have transient double vision or in a drinking game where one drinks Schnaps after reaching repeated digits when adding up numbers. I was not quite sure how to translate this into Urdu without having to go into the whole background of how German idioms often jokingly refer to alcohol.

 I decided to translate her comment as “What a memorable date”, and my grandfather nodded.

 We were then seen by a medical resident who also pointed out the unique birthday. His comment was “Darauf sollten wir einen trinken!”, which is another German idiom and translates to „we should all have a drink to celebrate this”, but really just means “Hooray!”  or “Great!”

 My grandfather wanted to know what the doctor had said and I was again in a quandary. Should I give him accurate translation and explain that this is just another German idiom and is not intended as a cultural insult to a Pakistani Muslim? Or should I just skip the whole alcohol bit? Translation between languages is tough enough, but translating and showing cultural sensitivity was more than I could handle. My Urdu was not very good to begin with, and all I could come up with the rather silly Urdu translation “It is an opportunity for great joy”. My grandfather gave me a puzzled look, but did not ask any questions.  

 ***** 

 On the day after my grand-father’s eye surgery, the ophthalmologist and the residents came by for morning rounds.  They removed his eye-patch, inspected the eye and told me that everything looked great. He just needed a few more days of recovery and would soon be able to go home. After putting the gauze and eye-patch back on, the doctors moved on to the next patient.

 Once the doctors had completed rounds, I made the acquaintance of the head nurse. She seemed to think that the eye ward was her military regiment and was running it like a drill-sergeant. She walked into every room and ordered all the patients to get out of bed and walk to the common area. Only lazy people stayed in bed, she said. The best way to recuperate was to move about.  

 I told her that I did not think my grandfather was ready to get up. 

“Did any doctor forbid him to get up?”

 “No, not really”, I replied.

 “If he has two legs, he can walk to the common room. If not, we will provide a wheelchair.”

 “He just had surgery yesterday and needs to rest”, I protested and pointed to my grandfather’s eye-patch.

 “Yesterday was yesterday and today is today!” was the response from the drill-sergeant.

 This statement did not seem very profound to me and I was waiting for a further explanation, but the drill-sergeant had already moved on, ordering the patients from the neighboring rooms to get up. My grandfather and I did not have much of a choice, so we joined the procession of one-eyed men who looked like retired, frail pirates. They were slowly shuffling out of their rooms towards the common area.

 The common area consisted of chairs and sofas as well as a couple of tables. I sat down in a corner with my grandfather, and we started talking. He told me stories from his life, including vivid descriptions of how he and his friends proudly defied the British colonialists. My grandfather recited poems from the Gulistan of the Persian poet Saadi for me in Persian and translated them into Urdu. He wanted to know about German history and what I was learning at school. He asked me if I knew any poems by Goethe, because the Indian poet Iqbal had been such a great admirer of Goethe’s poetry.

 We talked for hours. Like most children, I did not realize how much I enjoyed the conversations. It was only years later when my grandfather passed away that I wished I had taken notes of my conversations with him. All I currently have are fragmented memories of our conversations, but I treasure these few fragments.

 I then pulled out a tiny travel chess set that I had brought along, and we started playing chess. I knew that he had trouble distinguishing some of the pieces because of his eye surgery. I took advantage of his visual disability and won every game. During my conversations with my grandfather and our chess games, I noticed that some of the other men were staring at us. Perhaps they were irritated by having a child around. Maybe they did not like our continuous chatting or perhaps they just did not like us foreign-looking folks. I tried to ignore their stares, but they still made me quite uncomfortable.

 On the next day, we went through the same procedure. Morning rounds, drill sergeant ordering everyone to the common area, conversations with my grandfather and our chess games. The stares of the other patients were now really bothering me. I was wondering whether I should walk up to one of the men and ask him whether they had a problem with me and my grandfather. Before I could muster the courage, one of the men got up and walked towards us. I was a bit worried, not knowing what the man was going to do or say to us.

“Can you ask your grandfather, if I can borrow you?”

 “Borrow me?”, I asked, taken aback.

 “He gets to tell you all these stories and play chess with you for hours and hours, and I also want to have someone to talk to.”

 Once he had said that, another patient who was silently observing us chimed in and said that he would like to know if he could “borrow” me for a game of chess. I felt really stupid. The other patients who had been staring at me and my grandfather were not at all racist or angry towards us, they were simply envious of the fact that my grandfather had someone who would listen to him.

 I tried to translate this for my grandfather, but I did not know how to translate “borrow”. My grandfather smiled and understood immediately what the men wanted, and told me that I should talk to as many of the patients as possible. He told me that the opportunity to listen to others was a mutual blessing, both for the narrator as well as the listener.

 On that day and the next few days that my grandfather spent in the hospital, I spoke to many of the men and listened to their stories about their lives, their health, their work and even stories about World War 2 and life in post-war Germany. I also remember how I agreed to play chess, but when I pulled out my puny little travel chess set, my opponent laughed and brought a huge chess set from a cupboard in the common area. He beat me and so did my grandfather who then also played chess with me on this giant-size chess board which obliterated the visual advantage that my travel set had offered.

 *********** 

 Since that time I spent with my grandfather and the other patients on the eye ward, I have associated medicine with narration. All humans want to be narrators, but many have difficulties finding listeners. Illness is often a time of vulnerability and loneliness. Narrating stories during this time of vulnerability is a way to connect to fellow human beings, which helps overcome the loneliness. The listeners can be family members, friends or even strangers. Unfortunately, many people who are ill do not have access to family members or friends who are willing to listen. This is the reason why healthcare professionals such as nurses or physicians can serve a very important role. We listen to patients so that we can obtain clues about their health, searching for symptoms that can lead to a diagnosis. However, sometimes the process of listening itself can be therapeutic in the sense that it provides comfort to the patient.

 Even though I mostly work as a cell biologist, I still devote some time to the practice of medicine. What I like about being a physician is the opportunity to listen to patients or their family members. I prescribe all the necessary medications and tests according to the cardiology guidelines, but I have noticed that my listening to the patients and giving them an opportunity to narrate their story provides an immediate relief.

 It is an indeed an  “an opportunity for great joy”, when the patient experiences the joy of having an audience and the healthcare provider experiences the joy of connecting with the patient. I have often wondered whether there is any good surrogate for listening to the patient. Medicine is moving towards reducing face-to-face time between healthcare providers and patients in order to cut costs or maximize profits. The telemedicine approach in which patients are assessed by physicians who are in other geographic locations is gaining ground. Patients now often fill out checklists about their history instead of narrating it to the physicians or nurses. All of these developments are reducing the opportunity for the narrator-listener interaction between patients and healthcare providers. However, social networks, blogs and online discussion groups may provide patients the opportunities to narrate their stories (those directly related to their health as well as other stories) and find an audience. I personally prefer the old-fashioned style of narration. The listener can give instant feedback and the facial expressions and subtle nuances can help reassure the narrator. The key is to respect the narrative process in medicine and to help the patients find ways to narrate their stories in a manner that they are comfortable with.

Note: An earlier version of this article was first published on the Next Regeneration blog.

“Occidentophobia”: The Elephant in the Room

Scapegoating Muslims has become a convenient tool for promoting a far right political agenda. A Center for American Progress (CAP) report carefully outlined anti-Muslim fear-mongering in the United States, with the long-term hope that, by exposing the roots of anti-Muslim hostility, strategies can be developed to overcome such prejudice. However, relatively little attention is paid to "Occidentophobia," or more appropriately (since, like 'Islamophobia," it does not constitute a true "phobia") anti-Western sentiments among Muslims.

An international Pew Research Center report, with the innocuous title "Muslim-Western Tensions Persist," discussed the extent of Muslim anti-Western prejudice. The report summarized the results of a survey of Western stereotypes of Muslims living in predominantly Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Egypt and Pakistan. A median of 68 percent of the Muslim respondents associated "selfish" with Westerners, while only a median of 35 percent of non-Muslims living in countries such as Great Britain, the United States or Germany associated "selfish" with Muslims. One could conceivably attribute anti-Western hostility to the fact that Muslims living in predominantly Muslim countries may not have come into personal contact with Westerners. After all, this Pew survey report did not provide data about the attitudes of Muslims living in the West. However, an earlier Pew Research Center report released in 2006 titled "The Great Divide: How Muslims and Westerners View Each Other" also surveyed Muslims living in European countries and offered a fairly bleak picture of the anti-Western prejudice among European Muslims. Muslims in Britain had an especially negative response, as 69 percent of those surveyed attributed three or more negative traits such as "greedy," "selfish," "arrogant" or "immoral" to Westerners. This antagonistic attitude was in sharp contrast to the comparatively positive views of the non-Muslim general public in Britain, of whom only 30 percent attributed three or more negative traits to Muslims.

 The "selfish" or "greedy" traits attributed by Muslims in Britain to Westerners are especially noteworthy, since the majority of the top-ranking ranking countries in terms of charitable behavior, as measured by the World Giving Index of the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), happen to be countries that are typically associated with "Western culture," such as Australia, Canada, Switzerland, USA or Great Britain. According to the CAF, people living in Western countries appear to be far more likely to donate money or volunteer their time than those living in predominantly Muslim countries. This even holds true for relatively wealthy Muslim countries such as the UAE or Saudi Arabia, which came in at ranks 50 and 86 for charitable behavior, whereas Great Britain achieved an international rank of 8. These facts therefore raise questions about the seeming mis-perception of Western culture. Is the Muslim anti-Western prejudice due to ignorance, or is it the consequence of a very selective view of Western society? Is such anti-Western prejudice perhaps fueled by organizations with a political or ideological agenda, similar to those that promote anti-Muslim prejudice as uncovered by the Center for American Progress? Does anti-Western prejudice of Muslims living in the West manifest itself differently in Europe and in North America?

 Western Muslims frequently emphasize the rich cultural heritage and diversity of Islam as a means to combat anti-Muslim prejudice. At interfaith or intercultural events, Western Muslims discuss poems of the philosopher-poet Rumi and depict the vast array of cultural traditions in the Muslim world, ranging from Indian and Pakistani Qawwali music to Moroccan cuisine. For many non-Muslim Westerners, the abstract entities "Muslim" or "Islam" that were previously associated with fear are thus transformed into vibrant human encounters and allows them to move beyond their prejudice.

 However, when I discuss the concept of Western culture with Western Muslims, I often find that their perception of Western culture does not include the same desirable standard of openness. "The West" is regularly seen as some combination of loss of moral values, imperialism and drone attacks -- a description reminiscent of the Star Trek Borg species that assimilates into and then destroys other cultures. Many struggle with recognizing their own "Western" identity and few seem to associate "the West" with its grand cultural heritage, which reaches far back to Plato's The Republic but also includes Baroque music, Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," and the environmental movement. Even though many Western Muslims that I have met encountered Western culture and history during their grade school and university education, these encounters appear to be frequently tinged with an unnecessary denigration of Western culture. Allowing Muslims in Europe and North America to appreciate the rich mosaic and diversity that comprises "Western" culture might be an important step towards overcoming anti-Western prejudice.

 In addition to these anecdotal experiences, analytical studies such as the one conducted by the Center for American Progress are also necessary to help uncover the extent and roots of anti-Western prejudice among Muslims living in the West. The efforts to understand and combat anti-Muslim prejudice need to be accompanied by equal efforts to understand and combat anti-Western prejudice. The discussions about Muslim anti-Western prejudice and hostility are currently often confined to far right organizations in Europe and North America and are thus coupled with a specific agenda to malign Muslims using outrageous assertions and exaggerations. The analysis of Muslim anti-Western hostility deserves more serious scrutiny. Muslim anti-Western prejudice is sometimes treated like an elephant in the room that is ignored, even by liberal-progressive organizations and movements. It would be a fallacy to believe that prejudice and hostilities between Muslims and non-Muslims can be resolved by just asking non-Muslims to show more tolerance and understanding, without demanding reciprocity from Muslims.

  An earlier version of this article was published on the Guernica blog.