The Content Analysis of Dreams: Charting Your Symbolic Depths

 The two most well known methods for working with dreams are 1). Interpreting the symbolism of dreams through Carl Jung’s theory that dream images are representative of our subjective psychological concerns using free association and mythological amplification, and 2). Experiencing the events of the dream as a lived reality, either one that is self-generated as with lucid dreaming, one that is objectified and animated from our psychic concerns as with post-Jungian active imagination, or one that is spiritually authentic as with many ancient and magical approaches to dreaming.

These approaches are good for working with individual images within individual dreams, but for those who are more deeply invested in their dreaming, it can be extremely helpful to get a deeper understanding of the ways that the various symbols of our dreams interrelate or change over time. One of the best methods for working with dreams longterm and for understanding the scope of this inner symbolism is to perform what is called a content analysis of dream imagery.

As a method, the content analysis of dreams was developed by dream researchers Calvin S. Hall and Robert Van de Castle as a way of studying the commonalities between different people’s dreams, by objectively comparing the images that occurred across thousands of dream reports. 

When used to examine an individual’s dreams, content analysis demonstrates the two main features that have become central to the current cognitive understanding of how dreams work: There is a large degree of consistency in what a person dreams about across their life, and that there are direct continuities between what we dream about and what concerns us in our waking life (an idea that has become known as the Continuity Hypothesis, and which runs counter to Jung’s claim that dream images compensate by depicting what isn’t in our waking lives).

At its most basic, performing a content analysis of dreams entails creating organized lists of how often specific images occur within a large set of dreams (typically around 100 dreams). As the types of content that appear in dreams typically reflect narrative categories, these lists will most naturally be organized as lists of characters, activities, settings, objects, and effects, but can also include lists of emotions, descriptors, colors, genres, etc., as well as subcategories (for instance, people from real life, dream characters, antagonists, creatures, etc.).

Take each dream and write each image that appears on one of your lists, and repeat for the next dream, adding a tally each time an image appears. What you find is that images that appear over and over again have a greater psychic weight or are symbolic of ongoing or recurrent concerns for the dreamer. If you also include the dates of the dreams in which these images occur, this allows you to see which images frequently appear together, and how the importance of the images shifts over time.

Content analysis is typically used to quantify how frequently images occur, however, it also serves as a good base for a more qualitative analysis of the themes that occur in your dreams. Once you’ve located which images are the most prevalent, you can begin writing descriptions of them and what their significance is as a whole. For people who want to approach their dreams more creatively or as a dreamworld, you can also approach these lists as a form of world-building: turn the list of characters into a bestiary, draw maps from the lists of locations, etc.

Ultimately, analyzing the content of your dreams allows you to uncover your own personal system of symbolic correspondences, laying bare the associative webwork of images through which you unconsciously organize and make sense of the world.