The pattern of dreams of a sample of Nigerians

In order to highlight the pattern of dreams, the psychosocial factors associated with it, and the meaning attributed to dream contents, 431 Nigerians were interviewed, consisting of undergraduates and government workers. While 6.9% could not recall ever having had a dream experience, over one-third of subjects had had at least three dream experiences in the previous three months. The most important factors associated with increase in frequency of dreams were conditions involving a high degree of expectation, emotional disturbance and happiness. About one-half of subjects claimed their dreams were predictive of what would happen in real life, while 61% claimed that their dreams related to what they were thinking about. The more highly educated and younger subjects dreamt significantly more frequently. Although life events and GHQ-12 scores were not significantly associated with frequency of dreams, those who reported recurrent disturbing dreams had significantly higher GHQ-12 scores. Relating the dream reports to life experiences, we were able to discern the following themes: expectation of positive material rewards; sexual themes; religious themes; sickness and death themes; disappointment and general guilt themes; and abstract manifest contents. Guilt themes were the least frequent. The social and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.