Chapter Eight - Dreams across the Human Lifespan

Summary

Dreaming both reflects the stage of life in which we find ourselves and influences the character of that stage of life. For example, adolescence would not be adolescence without the wild, melodramatic, passionate, and swirling epic dreams teens have that center around those existential questions of “who am I” and “W\why am I here?,” etc. We will see in this chapter that dreaming appears to reflect and perhaps promote waking social interactions of the dreamer, and this is true across the entire lifespan of the dreamer from toddlerhood right through to death. Of course, that is not the whole story. Dream content across the lifespan involves far more than social interactions, but it is a striking and consistent fact that simulations of social interactions are a constant feature of dream life throughout the life cycle. If we want to understand the development of dreams and dream content across an average human lifespan, we will need to first summarize the key milestones or periods of the human life cycle from the cradle to the grave. Table 8.1 displays key characteristics of each of the major human life-cycle stages and sketches corresponding dream findings.