Chapter 4
States of Consciousness 104
103
Chapter 4
States of Consciousness
HANDOUT 4-3: Student Assignment: Keeping a Dream Journal
Your task for this assignment is to keep a dream journal for several weeks in order to record the content of at least five different dreams.
Instructions:
1. In order to best remember your dreams, you should follow several steps. First, place a pen and pad next to your bed before you go to sleep. Before you go to sleep, tell yourself that you’ll be able to remember your dreams when you wake up. When you do wake up, keep your eyes closed and replay the dream until the plot and details become clear in your mind. Then, gently sit up, turn on the light, and write down what you remember about your dream. If you typically have trouble remembering your dreams, try setting your alarm clock for 10 or 15 minutes earlier than normal (this should interrupt your last dream of the night).
2. When recording your dreams, include whatever information you can remember about:
• the setting (e.g., indoors or outdoors)
• characters (e.g., relatives, friends, strangers)
• the nature of the interaction (e.g., friendly, hostile, sexual)
• activities (e.g., running, speaking, flying)
• whether or not the dream was in color
• any relationship to the previous day’s events or the next day’s planned activities
3. Once you have recorded your dreams on paper, please type them and arrange them as a list of entries according to the date of the dream. When typing your dreams to hand in, feel free to summarize details or to edit material that you would like to keep to yourself; on the other hand, detailed transcripts are fine, too. Regardless of whether you edit your selections or not, be assured that any information that you turn in to me will be kept strictly confidential.
4. Following your final dream entry, spend a paragraph or two noting your observations and feelings about your dreams. Did you notice any major themes or patterns to your dreams? Did you generally dream in color? Did your dreams seem meaningful, or were they totally random and bizarre? Did you have any “lucid” dreams (i.e., in which you were aware of dreaming and exerted control over it)? Were there any recurring characters? Were than any specific events (such as drinking alcohol or getting very little sleep) that seemed to influence the content or character of your dreams?
Female
18 years old
Senior in high school/Dural enrollment student
Sport Volleyball, basketball and softball
This might help when u make up her dreams.
