The convergent validity of the ontopsychological procedure of dream content analysis

Abstract

Similar to psychoanalysis, analytical psychology and gestalt therapy, the ontopsychological approach (OA) uses dream analysis in psychotherapy practice. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis regarding the correlation between the ontopsychological dream content analysis system and the Hall and Van de Castle (HVDC) system, which is the most accredited and applied coding method of dream content analysis. Thirty dreams which had been already-coded along with the main content categories of HVDC (available at www.dreamresearch.net) were retrieved by an independent external judge and submitted to two ontopsychological psychotherapists. They were asked to code the dreams along with the main categories used by OA dream content analysis system. To determine the correlation between the two dream content analyses from the two different coding systems (OA vs. HVDC), Spearman rank correlations were computed between OA dream contents and the corresponding contents in the HVDC system. Specifically, the correlations were computed considering the number of words or strings of words that were correctly identified and entered into OA categories which were comparable to HVDC categories. The OA system included six contents categories. Of these, five were consistent, although partially differing in their denomination, with five out of the nine main HVDC categories. Spearman rank correlation coefficients varied from 0.53 to 0.82 between these five OA categories and the equivalent HVDC categories. Moderate to high correlations were observed between the OA and HVDC dream codes in five comparable categories and this suggests that the ontopsychological coding system has satisfying, although preliminary, convergent validity.