Dreams and waking life connection

Abstract

The present study explored individual’s connection between dreams and his waking life. Individuals’ personal experiences of dreams, their existence, purpose, belief, and truthfulness were explored in relationship to their daily life functioning. Present study aimed at identifying the collective themes of participants with researchers’ reflection. The sample of four adults (2 males, 2 females) with age range of 18-35 was recruited from different universities of Lahore. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted through interview schedule regarding participants’ personal demographics, schedules and hours of sleep, belief on the occurrences and fulfillment of dreams. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was applied to analyze the data individually and collectively across all participants. Findings revealed that 10 themes were generated from the data that include curiosity about dream content, dream and real life connection, intuition about death, wish fulfillment in dreams, sense of morality in dreams, and information about personality through dreams etc. These themes help us in better understanding of dreams and waking life connection.