Everyone dreams every night. These night time movies can range from night terrors to amazingly insightful episodes. The culture of the Senoi people of Malaysia was built around harnessing the power of dreams. The Senoi and Dream Power
1. Is this dreamer ACTIVE or PASSIVE in this dream. A researcher or dreamer could use a scoring system that went from 1 = toally passive to 5 = active. We found that the more active the dreamer, the less confusing and symbolic the dreams were. To simply the dream scoring system a dreamer could reasonably ask, “Was I active or passive in this dream?”
2. Is this dream CLEAR or UNCLEAR. Everyone has had a confusing dream which was like a Fellini movie that jumped from one event to the next without any seemingly logical progression. A second component in the dream scoring system went from 1 = toally confused to 5 = clear and logical. We found that the clearer the dream was the less confusing and symbolic the dreams were. To simply the dream scoring system a dreamer could reasonably ask, “Was this dream clear or unclear?”
3. Is this dreamer EXPRESSIVE or UNEXPRESSIVE in this dream. We found that when a dreamer was EXPRESSIVE in the dream, he or she also tended to be more active. A researcher or dreamer could use a scoring system that went from 1 = nonexpressive to 5 = expressive.
4. Are the other characters in the dream known or unknown. We found that when a dreamer has KNOWN characters in the dream, he or she also tended to be more ACTIVE and EXPRESSIVE. A researcher or dreamer could use a scoring system that went from 1 = unknown to 5 = totally known.
5. The fifth component of the dream scoring system was feeling. Are the feelings in this dream clear, i.e., anger, sadness, fear, happiness or were the feelings unclear, i.e., depressed, anxiety, or unknown. We found that when a dreamer’s feelings were clearly defined he or she tended to be more ACTIVE and EXPRESSIVE and just as importantly the other characters in the dream were KNOWN. A researcher or dreamer could use a scoring system that went from 1 = unknown feelings to 5 = totally known feelings.
RJ Lang and KP O’Connor in their research paper – Personality, dream content and dream coping style presented research on 130 subjects who completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and a Dream Analysis Questionnaire (DAQ), based on retrospective recall. They sought to further the findings that how a person functioned why awake was related to how they functioned in their dreams.
In their study Lang and O’Connor referred to the earlier research presented by myself and co-workers which suggested there is a parallel between waking behavior and dream behavior. Psychotherapy Research & Practice.
We published additional support for the thesis regarding the parallel between the dreaming and waking personality in the Journal of Clinical PsychologyThe Functional Analysis of Dreams: a new theory of dreaming.
One can further review the parallels between dreaming and waking in the following books: The Dream Makers The Dream Makers, Dreaming and Waking Dreaming and Waking, and the Functional Analysis of Dreams The Functional Analysis of Dreams.