The sleep, dreams, and sleep rituals of healthy subjects

Abstract

The article describes the sleeping habits, evening rituals, and dreams of 40 healthy subjects. The present work forms part of a series of investigations of mental health, based on a research project dealing with the mental health of Finnish students. Within the framework of this project, a total of four studies have so far been carried out. The work done in 1985, which is the 20-year follow-up, concentrated on that section of the base population whose mental health was the best, consisting of 18 women and 22 men. The most important finding is the greater mobility of women at early developmental levels in dream wishes, their ability and readiness to express dreams verbally, and their greater verbal capability in general. A great majority of the women (89%) reported generally sleeping well. Only 14% of the men had difficulties sleeping. This healthy subgroup thus slept better than the average Finns. Analysis of dreams reported revealed that women more often had oral-symbiotic, anal-dyadic and oedipal, whereas men had phallic-dyadic and latency dreams with regard to the developmental level of the dream wish. Persons appeared in 82% of the dreams of women and in 36% of those of men. An expressed emotion appeared in 47% of women's dreams and in 23% of men's.

Key Words:

• Dreaming
• Gender
• Healthy population
• Sleeping