Re-drafting into military service in dreams: Prevalence, emotional structure, and links to examination dreams

Abstract

Dreams in which individuals who have completed compulsory military service find themselves being drafted again are frequently reported in everyday discourse but have not been systematically examined in the academic literature. The present study aimed to investigate the prevalence, content structure, and emotional characteristics of re-drafting dreams and to explore their relationship with other typical dream themes. A cross-sectional design was employed with a sample of 290 adults who had completed compulsory military service in Turkey. Data were collected via an online self-report questionnaire assessing military experiences and dream content. Results indicated that 60.7% of participants reported experiencing military-related dreams, and among these, 59.7% described dreams involving being re-drafted into service. These dreams were predominantly recurrent and were characterized by anxiety and helplessness during the dream, followed by relief upon awakening. Perceiving military service as subjectively difficult significantly increased the likelihood of experiencing re-drafting dreams, whereas duration of service, psychiatric diagnosis, and self-evaluated performance were not significant predictors. Additionally, dreams involving the death of a parent were more frequent among participants reporting re-drafting dreams. In this study, re-drafting dreams were theoretically interpreted within the framework of Freud’s theory of typical dreams and Kohut’s concept of “self-state dreams,” which conceptualizes dreams as responses to the threat of self-fragmentation through the regulation of anxiety.