Dreams of Ukrainian female refugees to Poland after February 24, 2022: Quantitative dream content findings

Abstract

This study presents quantitative findings on the dream content of 50 Ukrainian women who fled to Poland after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 214 dreams from the period of the refugees’ stay in Poland were analyzed using the Hall and Van de Castle system. The results were compared to the normative dream content findings for the Ukrainian, Polish, and American societies. Additionally, subsamples of the most recent dreams and the dreams of the most traumatized and the least traumatized women were isolated and compared to the entire sample. The biggest differences between the whole sample and the Ukrainian, Polish, and American norms for women were found in the percentages of familiar characters, children, friends, aggression, victimization, friendliness, negative emotions, successes, and good fortunes. Most of the results are consistent with the dream characteristics of other traumatized populations, except for the low percentage of negative emotions. Overall, the Ukrainian refugees behave passively in their dreams. On the one hand, it reflects their social isolation and posttraumatic symptoms, but on the other hand one can speculate that it serves as a coping mechanism that helps the dreamers withdraw attention from their waking concerns.