The typical dreams in the life cycle

Abstract

Most dream content analyses have been carried out on young adult samples, taken as norms, with fewer researches on continuity and discontinuity in the life cycle. A research on dreams in the life cycle (1546 participants, from 8 to 70 years), with the Typical Dreams Questionnaire (Nielsen et al., 2003; Dumel, Nielsen, & Carr, 2012), shows that 55.8% of the dreams reports have one or more typical content, with quite a stable prevalence across ages, with more dreams with a TDQ item in children and in older adults, with the minimum percentage in young adults. Children have more diversity in typical themes than other ages.The most frequent items in children have content related to some threat or some magic topic.  “A person now dead as alive” is more frequent in older people, while “A person now alive as dead” in children and preadolescents.  “School, teachers and studying” is more frequent in adolescence and “Sexual experiences” in young adults. Adults and older adults dream more often of “Trying something again and again” and “Arriving too late”.  Changes in typical dream themes can be related to emotional concerns typical of different phases of the life cycle.