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Summary: Our culture often thinks of the dream as a highly personal experience. Although it is this, there are
universal themes which resonate for peoples from around the world. These themes have been discussed by
various dream theorists and are covered in this lesson.
Assignment: Students are given the option to join dream groups in bulletin board format. A step by step
procedure is outlined based on the lesson material encouraging these small groups to engage in group dream
interpretation.
Lesson #5 - Selected Topics
Summary: These topics include some discussion of intensified forms of dreaming such as nightmares;
characteristics of dreams in specific populations such as those addicted to a substance or in children.
Assignment: Students are offered the opportunity to receive a list of e-mail addresses of others in the class who
are interested in pursuing group dreamwork on the Internet. They are asked to evaluate the various
components of the course.
Also available on the dream course home page is a information related to the course. This includes: a student
bulletin board where students post messages about the class or about their particular interest in dreams; a list of
recommended books and links to dream related websites (an annotated list of links follows a qualifier about
linking to other dream sites on the Internet. This gives the student some idea of what else is available and
addresses the potential problems with accessing sites which offer dream interpretation.); a course bibliography;
biographical information about the instructor, including her photograph and a link to her full curriculum vitae;
and e-mail dialogue boxes to contact the instructor and/or the course web master.
This course is about 170 pages of written material with about 35% of that as assignments. Because the course
is offered on a web site, after an introduction to the unit the student is presented with a table of contents for the
topics included in that unit. Thus they can read the unit linearly or skip picking which topics are most
interesting or relevant for them. To enhance a sense of personal authority and psychological safety, throughout
the course material it is stressed that the dreamer is the final authority on their dreams.
In addition to the demand to write in relatively fully contained idea units, the level of the writing had to remain
rather elementary because of the potential target market. Also much of the writing was done in the first person
in order to enhance the felt experience of the student of being in a dialogue with the instructor. Thus personal
examples from the authors own life and work were used in an effort to personalize the instruction.
The assignments were designed as primarily closed ended questionnaires with ample opportunity for
commentary and dialogue. Because of this format the shape of the students information is quickly fed back to
them. Additionally, this form of response appeals to students in terms of increasing the likelihood that they
will initially fill out the questionnaire and thus continue with the course. As they become more comfortable
with the material they tend to prefer more open ended items. An important contribution of a web site based
assignment is the opportunity to take advantage of hyperlinking to increase the information possibilities and
structural potentials for learning. For instance, when filling out questionnaires people are often curious about
how others may have answered a particular item. In some assignments the student can link to such normative
data. Although from this may bias the students response it helps, especially with sensitive material, to
encourage the student to realize that their experiences are not as unusual as they often fear when working with
dreams.
For the fourth assignment the students are given an opportunity to participate in an on-line dream group. The
model of these groups is leaderless and without theoretical assumption. After acknowledging that they have
read a series of ‘groundrules’ which not only explain the procedure of the groups but also the ethical aspects of
working in a dream group in any setting, the student is assigned to a dream group. The form of these on-line
dream groups is using a bulletin board to which they can post their responses to the dreams of their classmates.
These dream group postings are monitored by the instructor to insure the psychological appropriateness of the
responses within the loose structure. Suggestions for appropriate posting on a bulletin board as well as the
basic outline of the group procedure are available to the student each time they access their dream group