The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation |
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Authors: | Kelly Bulkeley |
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Institution: | (1) Graduate Theological Union, 226 Amherst Avenue, Kensington, CA 94708, USA |
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Abstract: | Dream content is meaningfully related to waking life religiosity, so much so that reading a person’s dream reports “blindly,”
without any other personal information or associations from the dreamer, can reveal with surprising accuracy his or her basic
waking attitude toward religion and spirituality. Two long-term dream journals are analyzed in this manner, and the results
demonstrate that dream content is an accurate reflection of a person’s religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. The
significance of this for pastoral psychologists lies not in specific new techniques of dream interpretation but more fundamentally
in supporting the practice of paying attention to dreams in the first place. The goal of the article is to build a bridge
between pastoral psychological interest in dreams and the latest findings in the scientific study of dreaming. Contrary to
the assumption that religion and science inevitably conflict with each other, dreaming offers an area of potential religion–science
convergence. |
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Keywords: | Dreams Religion Spirituality Science Content analysis |
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