DREAM JOURNAL

Jenna Benson

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

BASELINE DATA: Mean
09/14/2017 09/15/2017 09/16/2017 09/17/2017

Total Hours of sleep: 8 hrs. 6.5 hrs. 7 hrs. 7 hrs. 7.125 hrs.

Number of dreams
that you can recall 1 2 2 1 1.5
at least partially:

Number related to
experiences of the 1 1 2 1 1.25
day:

Day 5 Day 6 Day 7

REMEMBER DATA: Mean
09/18/2017 09/19/2017 09/20/2017

Total Hours of sleep: 6 hrs. 8.5 hrs. 6.5 hrs. 7 hrs.

Number of dreams
that you can recall 1 1 2 1. 𝟑
at least partially:

Number related to
experiences of the 1 1 1 1
day:

DREAM #1:

Description:
I didn’t have to put any effort into remembering this dream because it was one of those
dreams that just sticks in your mind. It wasn’t necessarily a weird or crazy dream, but it
definitely stood out. I remember walking around at some kind of farmer’s market or
festival with my parents. I know both parents were there, but I only remember seeing
my mom. It was a sunny day, and I was happy. While I was talking to my mom, I
walked into one of the booths at the festival that was selling t-shirts. My parents told me
that we would be moving to Canada, but they didn’t exactly explain why. I felt a pang
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Jenna Benson
of excitement and insisted on buying a really, really obnoxious USA t-shirt from the
vendor’s booth. I remember being adamant about this, selecting one that was
plastered with American flags and bald eagles. I wasn’t going to leave until I got a shirt
that I could take to Canada to show off my American roots. I don’t remember the
details of moving to Canada in my dream, we kind of all just appeared there, but
suddenly I felt immense disappointment. I missed our old place, and being in the new
country wasn’t as much of a thrill as it had been initially. It had just rained, and I
sloshed around alone on an empty college campus wishing I could go back to Utah.

1. Can you attribute the general emotional-tenor of your dreams to anything in your current
life?
Yes, definitely. I think I am really excited for the future, but also nervous that it is
going to end up being disappointing or not as fun as I have imagined. I think the
attitude toward Utah, or home, in my dream is the way I feel in real life. I mean, the
happier half of it took place in some kind of market in Salt Lake City, while the
gloomy half took place away from home, and if that’s not indicative of the way I feel
then I don’t know what is.

2. To what extent is your dream a re-hashing of the previous days’ events?

Surprisingly, much of my dream came from my thoughts and actions during the
previous days. The whole Canada thing probably seems bizarre and goofy, but I
remember thinking of a family member of mine who lives there, as well as a trip I
took to Canada with someone I love who passed away. Additionally, the
market/festival seems significant because recently I’ve started going to a lot more
local events in SLC, and those are what make Utah feel like home and Canada
seem foreign. That day, I was thinking back to and even wearing the shirt of the
2017 Avenues Street Fair that I had gone to that weekend.

3. Who were the characters in your dream? Were they people that you know or
strangers? What was the nature of their interaction with you?
The only significant people in my dream were my parents. Of course, there were
strangers in the background, but they didn’t play a role in my dream. Even then, the
interactions that I had with my parents were very brief and matter of fact, and I don’t
even remember seeing my dad, only hearing him - so I think I can conclude that
people didn’t play that big of a part in this dream. I was mostly alone, especially
after we had actually moved to Canada and I began attending college. The new
college campus felt eerie because rather than booming with hundreds of students,
it was just me.
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Jenna Benson

DREAM #2:

Description:
This dream started out really normal. It began at work, probably on a weekend, and it
almost felt like real life. Nothing was out of the ordinary. I was doing my job (and it was
just as tedious as it normally is) and interacting with the coworkers and customers that
I normally interact with. But the tone changed suddenly. It seemed like in a matter of
seconds all the familiar faces I worked with vanished and the building became darker.
People who I know and don’t really like started showing up to intimidate me and watch
me do my job. The emotion of the dream went from very “regular” to anxious and
almost frightening once this began happening. In the dream I was extremely nervous,
which caused me to keep messing up my work, which in turn made me even more
nervous. Screams in the background from Halloween decorations were amplified and
ended up being all I could hear as I was taunted and judged. My manager stood over
me, and I could tell she was noticing my mistakes, but all I could do was keep my head
down and say nothing.

1. Can you attribute the general emotional-tenor of your dreams to anything in your current
life?
I’ve had some conflict with old friends in my life, so I think I can definitely contribute
the worry I felt in my dream to that. I may be afraid of being judged, and I am
definitely worried that I’ll mess up at work, so the emotions I felt in this dream make
a lot of sense.

2. To what extent is your dream a re-hashing of the previous days’ events?

During the previous days, I have gone to work, so that’s why it is the setting of my
dream. At the moment, I’m one of the best employees in my position and I had
been talking about that with my parents. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to
lose that status, so I couldn’t make any mistakes. Also, again, I’ve recently had a
little bit of conflict with certain people, so I can attribute that to why they showed up
in my dream. One of the people in my dream actually did show up to my work one
day just to bother me, which, like in my dream (though not nearly as bad), made me
nervous.

3. Who were the characters in your dream? Were they people that you know or
strangers? What was the nature of their interaction with you?
The people in my dream were people who I mostly don’t really like. Despite there
only being a few of them, it felt like they were bigger than they actually are, forming
a large crowd around me. The interactions I had with them were really negative and
overwhelming, contributing largely to the unhappy part of my dream. In addition,
though, one of my managers who is very stern was there watching over me and
ensuring that I was doing my job correctly. The interactions I had with my manager
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weren’t necessarily negative, but they were what made me so anxious, since I have
a lot of respect for her and didn’t want to mess up.

DREAM #3:

Description:
I wasn’t able to make a lot of sense of this dream. It took place in a brightly-lit white
and silver factory. I could hear the loud clatter and commotion of metal and machinery,
even though I couldn’t see any of the sources of the noises – just white walls. I sat
cross-legged on a large conveyer belt that slowly moved into a square metal tunnel
where a robot piped small, white circles onto the belt. I was lost in concentration,
lowering my face to these little objects and squinting to distinguish their details. It was
my job to scrutinize them and make sure they were perfectly smooth on top and
perfectly circular, and if they weren’t, I needed to scrape them off the belt and fix it.
The conveyer belt seemed to go on forever, moving at a painfully slow pace. When it
finally ended, I climbed off. I can’t put a name to the face, but I remember meeting
someone at the end, and the monotony I felt turned into a pleasant feeling. Rather than
feeling uneasy like I did in the tunnel, a wave of security fell over me, like I was being
protected.

1. Can you attribute the general emotional-tenor of your dreams to anything in your current
life?
It was definitely easier with my other two dreams, but I can sort of connect my real-
life emotions to the emotions I felt in this dream. I have been really concentrated on
a lot of aspects of my life, which is most likely why I felt that way about the conveyer
belt and the little, piped circles. I feel the need to make the things I do in life
perfect, and if they’re not, I scrape them off and throw them out.

2. To what extent is your dream a re-hashing of the previous days’ events?

I have no idea where the factory setting popped up in my dream, but I might have
an idea about why the factory looked the way it looked. That night I was reading
stories about patients in psychiatric hospitals, some of which were put into plain,
white rooms as an (inhumane) punishment, but I don’t necessarily know if that’s
where the setting of my dream came from.

3. Who were the characters in your dream? Were they people that you know or
strangers? What was the nature of their interaction with you?
There weren’t many people in my dream. For the most part it was just me, but
toward the end a friend of mine “rescued” me. Even though the interaction he had
with me was brief, it seemed to play a significant role in the dream because it
ended the monotonous cycle of judging small rubber circles on a conveyer belt.
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Jenna Benson

DREAM INTERPRETATION: DREAM #2:

For my dream interpretation, I visited the website http://www.dreamforth.com/. The
website told me that the fact I dreamed of being at work means that I may be feeling
anxious about some of my present assignments/projects and I need to “quit
procrastinating” and finish any tasks I may have. Because people who I don’t like
showed up in my dream, according to Dreamforth, signifies that my previously held
opinions are changing, I am at odds with certain other people, and my nervousness
showed my personality’s timidity. Seeing my manager showcases my
“aggressiveness” and my uneasiness with having someone superior to me because it
makes me incapable of being an individual. In addition, the screaming in my dream
supposedly represents “that [I am] harboring unreleased fury and terror deep inside”.

1. Do you feel that the dream interpretation that you found was accurate? Why or why not?
I feel that my interpretation was partially accurate, not because the website was
correct, but because the descriptions that http://www.dreamforth.com/ provided
were vague and obvious (the Barnum effect). Of course, feeling nervous in a dream
shows that I’m a bit timid (everyone is a little bit timid); I don’t think that’s some
huge revelation. And I think the notion that there was screaming in my dream
means that I have some deep-rooted hatred or dread inside of me is an excessive
interpretation. The screaming I heard wasn’t some meaningful symbol thing that
revealed my hidden dread – it was simply because my work has actual Halloween
decorations up that my coworkers and I often make fun of because they’re so
clamorous. I have seen websites like Dreamforth in the past and I think, again, that
they rely on vague explanations and people that want to find meaning within their
mostly meaningless dream. What’s interesting, though, is that even though the
descriptions are vague enough to fit anyone, they are also too specific and bizarre.
While scrolling through the website I found that a cow skull supposedly “implies that
your relationship with your mother isn't very close and you don't share your feelings
with each other”, which is ridiculously specific. Although dreams are most definitely
tied to our daily lives and thoughts and emotions, not every tiny aspect of a dream
has a purpose or hidden message. I was also wearing black in my dream, but that’s
because my uniform is black, not because it “stands for darkness, isolation, and
unimportance”.

2. In what ways could you empirically (scientifically) prove or disprove the accuracy and
validity of dream interpretations?
I genuinely don’t think there’s a way to completely accurately prove that dream
interpretations are real. There’s only one way I was able to brainstorm and it’s still
not all that great: Have subjects fill out a detailed questionnaire about how they’re
feeling, including any triumphs or any issues that they are having in life. Allow the
subjects to fall asleep while you are measuring their brain waves, and once they’re
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in REM sleep, wake them up and ask them to explain their dream in detail to a
dream interpreter (if that’s even a real title). In this experiment, the subject wouldn’t
know the true purpose of the experiment and neither would the interpreter, in order
to ensure that none of the results are biased or skewed. If the interpreter’s
comments about the dream match what the subject answered on their survey, then
I guess dream interpretation has some truth to it - but interpretations probably
wouldn’t be spot on, and because interpretations are so vague, it’s impossible to
know whether it’s the interpreter or the ambiguity that is allowing the match ups.
Also, this isn’t a true experiment. It lacks several things that are necessary for a real
experiment, including a control group and proper variables. I don’t feel that it’s
possible to determine that dream interpretations are valid or invalid using
experimentation.

3. Do you personally believe that dreams can be sources of information that can give you a
glimpse into the future, spiritual insights, or some other important knowledge? Explain
your answer.
I don’t think dreams have any supernatural powers, like the ability to predict the
future or make spiritual insights. Maybe I’m too much of a skeptic, but there’s no
solid proof that dreams can achieve these types of things. Some people may reply
to this train of thought with a time that they dreamed something and it actually
ended up happening. I think that has happened to most of us, as it has definitely
happened to me. However, my response to that would simply be to point out that
we dream every night. That adds up to thousands of dreams in a lifetime. Surely
one of them will end up “predicting the future”, or being similar to something that
will end up happening. And of course, you’ll ignore the hundreds, perhaps
thousands of times, that your dreams didn’t predict the future and only focus on the
one that did. This is the same phenomenon that explains how the Simpsons has
“predicted” historical events like 9/11 and Donald Trump’s election. There are over
600 episodes of the Simpsons, and hundreds of times that they made goofy
predictions and got them wrong, but it’s easy to focus on the few they have gotten
right because it seems so fantastic.
Despite all this, I can hop on board with the belief that dreams are able provide
insight into our own brains and feelings – after all, that’s where they occur. I had
never recorded or put this much thought into my dreams, but after doing it for about
a week I think it’s obvious that there are a few themes that keep popping up. I am
often striving for perfection and afraid of failure, so there are definitely patterns that
I can pinpoint and connect to my real-life emotions, but that’s it for me. I think this
perspective is a completely logical connection to make, but there’s no psychic,
hocus-pocus magic associated with dreams, in my opinion.