The Cultural and Intersubjective Context of Dream Remembrance and Reporting

Abstract

Dreams are personal symbols in Obeyesekere’s (1981) use of that term, in that they carry meaning at the cultural and psychological levels simultaneously. Dreams cannot be understood without knowing a great deal about the cultural frames, meanings, attitudes, and beliefs within which they are constructed and interpreted. And conversely, dream thoughts and imagery may illustrate or reveal a number of important cultural themes or processes. But it is equally true that dreams are not rigidly determined by cultural processes. People do not merely register or reproduce cultural meanings and beliefs in their dreams; they use, manipulate, and transform those cultural resources in personally creative and expressive ways. And so dreams also reveal or illustrate, through culturally influenced symbols and imagery, the wishes, desires, preoccupations, concerns, and life circumstances of individual dreamers (for surveys of other contemporary views of dreams in cultural context, see Kennedy and Langness 1981 and Tedlock 1987, 1994).