Cross-cultural dream use in Hawaii.

Abstract

Cultural variations in the narrative content of dreams have been reported in many studies. This basic cultural difference in dream language and representations has been used to support psychoanalytic theories of dreaming, especially that of the Jungian-based schools. Others have postulated that such variations reflect the cultural differences that each individual experiences during waking life. This "continuity" hypothesis proposes that a high correlation exists between an individual's waking life and his or her dream content. The biologic framework of dreams, sleep/dream-state physiology, is cross-culturally consistent, and the incidence of dream related pathology also is remarkedly similar between differing cultures.