Ego Modalities in the Manifest Dreams of Male and Female Chicanos^†

Abstract

When the manifest dreams of young adult male and female Chicanos were examined through an inventory which captures the dream content and pattern, striking differences between male and female dreams were found in the areas of setting, characters, interaction, self, instinctual modalities, and realism. Generally speaking, the men's internal psychic world, as viewed through their dreams, tended to be organized around a highly visible and demarcated self seen as robustly active, randomly in motion, and often contentiously involved with unrelated others. The confines of this internal world were sketched in as broad, but were occupied by boundaries and barriers and were often subject to unpredictable events. In contrast, the women's internal world contained a relatively less sharply defined and less robustly active self, but also a less contentious self with a greater range of interactions with more, and more familiar characters. Narrower confines were matched by less emphasis on boundaries, greater predictability, and more goal-directed locomotion.

Cognitive Differences in Dream Content between English Males and Females Attending Dream Seminars Using Quantitative Content Analysis

“…Further, female dreamers typically report more friendly interactions among dream characters, with less aggression and sexual activity than reported by male dreamers (Domhoff, 1996;Hall & Van de Castle, 1966;Hall et al, 1982;Krippner & Weinhold, 2002). This finding was also shown by Brenneis and Roll (1975) using different content scales. Also, while females typically report equal percentages of male and female characters involved in both aggressive and friendly interactions, male dreamers more often report aggression with other male characters and more friendly interactions with female characters (Domhoff, 1996;Garfield, 1988).…”

“…Male dreamers also report a greater frequency of violent and aggressive interactions, sexual activity, and achievement strivings compared to female dreamers (Hall et al, 1982;Van de Castle, 1971;Winget et al, 1972). In dreams with aggressive content, male dreamers also typically report a higher percentage of physical aggression than reported by females (Brenneis & Roll, 1975;Domhoff & Schneider, 1999).…”

Finding Meaning in Dreams

“…Although there are no studies using the Hall/Van de Castle system that included Mexican-American male students, Brenneis (1976) and Brenneis and Roll (1975) compared the dream reports of Mexican-American and Anglo-American male and female students at the University of New Mexico using the scale of "34 ego dimensions" developed by Brenneis and discussed in Chapter 2. Their results are not strictly comparable with other findings in this chapter, but there is enough overlap in some of the scales to make several of their findings of interest.…”

Common errors in psychotherapy with Chicanos: Extrapolations from research and clinical experience.

“…Research projects which have attempted to take into account the rich complexity of the Chicano experience include the work of Brenneis & Roll (1975) which relied on the use of Spanish in the home to identify adherence to cultural norms and Edgerton & Karno (1971) which investigated differences between Chicanos who speak mainly Spanish and those who do not speak Spanish. Their findings indicated that "the more commonly described cultural traits of Mexican-American-e.g., fatalism, familism, strong attachment to formal religious values, patriarchal authoritarianism, and conservative morality regarding deviant behavior -are applicable (and even here with many exceptions and qualifications) only to those persons who speak mainly or only Spanish" (1971, p. 290).…”