American Dreamers: Let’s Focus on the Focus Group

Here is some information about the dreamers who made up the focus group for the research in my book American Dreamers.

The 10 members of the “dreamers focus group”

Elizabeth is a fifty-eight year old hospital technician from Kentucky who has overcome the challenges posed by two divorces, several alcoholic family members, breast cancer and chemotherapy, and a number of other serious medical conditions requiring surgery.  She considers herself a “survivor.”  For many years she has been energetically involved in the activities of her local Disciples of Christ Church community.  Elizabeth’s a registered Democrat who says she’s very liberal in her political beliefs, although she favors more freedom for gun owners and voted for George W. Bush in 2004.

Kip is a fifty-two year old ranch manager and horse trainer from Northern California.  Twenty years ago she took her seventeen-month old baby and left her second husband to form a new family with her partner Janet, a local sheriff.  They’ve been together ever since, and Kip’s daughter just graduated from college.  Raised in a strict Catholic family, Kip is now very independent spiritually and laughingly considers herself a member of the “church of the living hoof.”  She’s a Democratic voter who detests President Bush, although in general she’s not much interested in partisan politics.  Her views used to be more liberal, but today she says she’s “hardened up a bit,” and if anything considers herself a political moderate.

Two married couples are included in the group of ten participants.  The first of these couples went through an incredibly harrowing series of life challenges during the year of their journal-keeping.  Dan is a thirty-six year old Army Special Forces sergeant, a career soldier approaching the twenty-year retirement mark.  He left for his third tour in Iraq during the journal-keeping year.  Raised Catholic, he is politically conservative and believes the U.S. is engaged in a difficult but necessary long-term battle to “plant the seeds of democracy” in the Arab world.

Dan has been married for five years to Sophia, a thirty-one year old who takes care of their preschool-age daughter in their home on the outskirts of Dan’s current base in North Carolina.  Sophia has always been an active dreamer, and in her local community she’s known as someone who’s available to talk about dreams.  She’s politically conservative and supportive of President Bush, but spiritually progressive in avoiding fundamentalist church-goers and seeking alternative, non-Christian sources of wisdom.  Soon after she began keeping her sleep and dream journal, and right after Dan received his latest deployment notice, Sophia discovered she was pregnant.  Her journal thus became a record of her sleep and dream experiences across the nine-month term of her pregnancy, the last half of which she spent alone while Dan fought in Iraq.

The remaining six members of this group are, or have been, residents of the same rural, economically-depressed county in Western New York.  Richard is a forty-eight year old hospital security manager who was born in Germany and immigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was one year old.  His views tend to be conservative both religiously and politically (he’s pro-Bush and pro-Iraq war).  He used to be registered as a Democrat but recently changed his affiliation to Republican.  Relatively short of stature, Richard has a black belt in karate and is the founder of a successful, all-volunteer animal rehabilitation clinic in his community.

Grace, a forty-six year old preschool teacher, is Richard’s wife.  She says she’s becoming increasingly conservative in her politics, and for the most part she supports President Bush, although she usually tries to pay as little attention to political current events as possible.  Raised as a Catholic, she is now more interested in Christian spirituality outside of formal church settings.  She and Richard have a nine-year old daughter whom they adopted as a baby, and whose well-being is the core concern of their lives.

Will is a twenty-six year old man who grew up in a town close to where Richard and Grace live.  He’s well educated, highly intelligent, and knowledgeable about a wide variety of subjects.  He’s had difficulty in school and work, though, due in part to a hand deformity and a history of emotional troubles.  Will is politically liberal and an avowed atheist—two qualities that further alienate him from the traditionalist mores of his conservative Catholic surroundings.

Paul is an eighty year old former Catholic priest who left his Franciscan order to marry an ex-nun.  They raised four children, then divorced; he remains on good terms with her, even though she remarried soon after they split.  Paul considers himself wiser now about religion than when he was a priest, and he leads a physically and socially active life.  A pro-Bush, pro-war Democrat, he is an avid viewer of Fox television news.

Lola is a 49-year old administrator at a retirement home.  Her life was scarred by a heart-rending tragedy ten years ago—in the heat of a family argument, one of her sons shot and killed her other son.  They were fourteen and eleven years old at the time.  The echoes of that awful fratricide continue to reverberate in her family, in her local community, and in her dreams.  Lola was raised Lutheran, though she does not currently attend church.  She prays regularly and considers spirituality to be immensely important in her life.  Politically she’s a conservative Republican, though she’s sickened by the war (one of her nephews is in the Army, serving his first tour in Iraq) and she can’t bear to watch or listen to the news anymore.

Nadine is a 24-year old waitress living in Florida, engaged to be married and planning to move soon to Colorado.  Raised as a Catholic in the same Western New York region, Nadine recently moved away from home and is trying to start a new life on her own.  She hasn’t entirely rejected Catholicism, but she avoids organized religion in general, preferring to pursue her interests in Native American spiritual traditions. Her political views are mostly liberal (she worked for two years in Americorps, the youth volunteer program founded by Bill Clinton), although she is very upset that affirmative action policies limit the financial opportunities for “non-minority” people like her.

Dream series available for study

Five of the focus group dream series—those of Will, Paul, Grace, Lola, and Sophia—as well as collections of dreams of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are available for study at www.dreambank.net, along with dozens of other dream series gathered from other sources.  Instructions for performing easy word-search analyses of these dreams can be found by clicking the website’s “help” button.


Is My Dream Research Biased? A Quick Look at Limitations and Suppositions

When I wrote my book, American Dreamers: What Dreams Tell Us about the Political Psychology of Conservatives, Liberals, and Everyone Else,
I expected some resistance such as:

Dreams are crazy nonsense.

Response: Wrong.  Dreams are meaningful expressions of people’s most important concerns, activities, and beliefs in waking life.  Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t paid attention to the last half-century of dream research.  For scientific evidence in favor of the “continuity hypothesis” see www.dreamresearch.net

Dream interpretation is Freudian foolishness.

Response: I’m using methods very different from Freudian psychoanalysis.  I start with broad, easily observable patterns in large collections of dreams, and then focus on particular dreams that can further illuminate those patterns.

The author is a leftwing nut job.

Response: True, I live near Berkeley, California.  I have a pony-tail and an androgynous name, and I’m a strong Obama supporter.  So what?  My book still provides a “fair and balanced” account of the political psychology of liberals and conservatives, highlighting the character virtues and weaknesses of each perspective, using methods that anyone can try for themselves.  Take a look at the brief biographies of the 10 members of the “dreamers focus group” and you’ll see the political diversity of the dream material presented in the book.

Limitations to my findings

Limits to the sleep and dream poll:

My friends in the social sciences have pointed out the many uncertainties that bedevil the use of simple statistics like these in arguing for broad psychological theories.  I share their concerns, which were well expressed by de Tocqueville: “When statistical method is not based upon rigorously accurate calculations, it leads to error rather than to guidance.  The mind easily allows itself to be deluded by the deceptive appearance of precision which statistics retain even when wrong and it relies confidently upon mistakes apparently clothed in the forms of mathematical truth” (Democracy in America, 255).  I fully recognize the limits of these data, but I’ll stand by the rigor and accuracy of my calculations regarding the sleep and dream patterns of contemporary Americans until other researchers come up with something better.

Limits to the dreamers focus group:

Without question, the lives of ten people can never be a perfect mirror of a nation of three hundred million.  Any research project that’s based on data from journals, interviews, and surveys runs the danger of over-generalization.  Although I tried to cast as wide a recruiting net as possible, these ten dream-journaling volunteers included no Hispanics or African-Americans, no one from the Midwest or deep South, no high-income professionals, no evangelical Christians, no Jews or Muslims.  Any claims made in this book must be qualified by those limitations.  Still, these ten particular people’s lives embody so many of the challenges facing the country today that it’s fair to view them as representing other Americans with similar experiences and convictions.  We can’t learn everything from this group, but we can learn a lot.

American Dreamers: How Sleep, Dreams, and Religion Intersect

Interested in the ways that sleep, dreams and religion intersect for American Dreamers?  Below are some of the data charts from my book American Dreamers.

Religious Attendance x Sleep

More than once a week Never
Sleep Less than 6 hours a night 11 18
6-8.9 hours a night 84 76
More than 9 hours a night 2 6
Insomnia Never 70 51
1-2 nights a week 13 19
3 or more nights a week 13 27

Religious Attendance x Dream Prototypes

More than once a week Never
A person who’s now dead appearing alive 29 41
Magically flying in the air 25 29
Being chased or attacked 33 45
Falling 40 44
Sexual experiences 34 50
Being in a situation exactly like your regular waking life 53 63
Being aware you’re dreaming and able to control the dream 37 47

Chapter 3 discusses these findings in relation to the religious and spiritual dimensions of the dreams of the journal keepers. For more on dreaming and religion generally, see Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History.