Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Dreams pp 249–264Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The New Anthropology of Dreaming

  • Chapter

Abstract

In recent years dream researchers have become sensitive to the differences between dream accounts and dreams. While dreams are private mental acts, which have never been recorded during their actual occurrence, dream accounts are public social performances taking place after the experience of dreaming. When dreamers decide, for whatever reason, to share a dream experience, they choose an appropriate time and place, a specific audience and social context, a modality (visual or auditory), and a discourse or performance form. While some clinicians and experiential dream workers operate with the fiction that when they hear or produce a sufficiently dramatic dream report they can recover the dream itself, as if entering into a “real dream life” (Mahrer 1989: 44–46), cultural anthropologists have turned their attention to the study of dream sharing as a communicative event (B. Tedlock 1987a).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Anderson, Barbara G. 1971. “Adaptive Aspects of Culture Shock.” American Anthropologist 73: 1121–1125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Basso, Ellen B. 1987. “The Implications of a Progressive Theory of Dreaming,” in Dreaming. Ed. Barbara Tedlock, pp. 86–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bird, Brian. 1972. “Notes on the Transference: Universal Phenomenon and Hardest Part of Analysis.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 20: 267–301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1978. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Richard Nice, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruce, Robert D. 1975. Lacandon Dream Symbolism: Dream Symbolism and Interpretation, vol. 1. Mexico: Ediciones Euroamericanas.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1979. Lacandon Dream Symbolism: Dictionary, Index and Classifications of Dream Symbols, vol. 2. Mexico: Ediciones Euroamericanas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright, Rosalind D. 1977. Night Life: Explorations in Dreaming. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cesara, Manda (pseudonym of Karla Poewe). 1982. Reflections of a Woman Anthropologist. No Hiding Place. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Charsley, S. R. 1973. “Dreams in an Independent African Church.” Africa 43(3): 244–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, James. 1986. “New Translations of Michel Leiris.” Sulfur 15: 4–125.

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins, Kathleen May. 1977. “Secret Desires in Social Contexts: An Anthropological Approach to Dreams.” M.A. thesis in anthropology, University of Illinois, Chicago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crapanzano, Vincent. 1981. “Text, Transference, and Indexicality.” Ethos 9: 122–148.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Degarrod, Lydia Nakashima. 1989. Dream Interpretation among the Mapuche Indians of Chile. Ph.D. diss. in anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1990. “Coping with Stress: Dream Interpretation in the Mapuche Family.” Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa 15(2): 111–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dentan, Robert Knox. 1983. A Dream of Senoi. Special Studies Series, Council on International Studies, State University of New York. Amherst: State University of New York at Buffalo.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1986. “Ethnographic Considerations in the Cross-Cultural Study of Dreaming, in Sleep and Dreams. Edited by Jayne Gackenbach, pp. 317–358. New York: Garland.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1988a. “Butterflies and Bug Hunters: Reality and Dreams, Dreams and Reality.” Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa 13(2): 51–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1988b. “Lucidity, Sex, and Horror in Senoi Dreamwork.” In Conscious Mind Sleeping Brain. Ed. Jayne Gackenbach and Stephen LaBerge, pp. 37–63. New York: Plenum Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Desjarlais, Robert. 1991. “Samsara’s Sadness: Sherpa Shamanism and the ‘Calling of Lost Souls.’” Ph.D. diss. in anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Devereux, George. 1956. “Mohave Dreams of Omen and Power.” Tomorrow 4(3): 17–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1978. Ethnopsychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis and Anthropology as Complementary Frames of Reference. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dombeck, Mary-Therese Behar. 1989. “Dreams and Professional Personhood.The Contexts of Dream Telling and Dream Interpretation among American Psychotherapists.” Ph.D. diss. in anthropology, University of Rochester.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster, George M. 1973. “Dreams, Character, and Cognitive Orientation in Tzintzuntzan.” Ethos 1:106–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freud, Sigmund. 1958 [1914]. “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through.” Standard Edition 12: 145–156. London: Hogarth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 3–30. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gregor, Thomas. 1981. “A Content Analysis of Mehinaku Dreams.” Ethos 9: 353–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, Calvin S. 1951. “What People Dream About.” Scientific American 184(5): 60–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • —. 1953. The Meaning of Dreams. New York: Harper & Row.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herdt, Gilbert H. 1977. The Shaman’s ‘Calling’ among the Sambia of New Guinea.” Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes 33: 153–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • —. 1987. “Selfhood and Discourse in Sambia Dream Sharing,” in Dreaming. Ed. Barbara Tedlock, pp. 55–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1988. “Dream Work and Field Work: Linking Cultural Anthropology and the Current Dream Work Movement,” in The Variety of Dream Experience. Ed. Montague Ullman and Claire Limmer, pp. 117–141. New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hodes, Matthew. 1989. “Dreams Reconsidered.” Anthropology Today 5(6): 6–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hollan, Douglas. 1989. “The Personal Use of Dream Beliefs in the Toraja Highlands.” Ethos 17(2): 166–186.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, Harry T. 1989. The Multiplicity of Dreams: Memory, Imagination, and Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jackson, Michael. 1978. “An Approach to Kuranko Divination.” Human Relations 31: 117–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kilborne, Benjamin. 1978. Interpretations de reve au Maroc. Claix: La Pens6e Sauvage, Bibliotheque d’Ethnopsychiatrie.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kracke, Waud. 1978. “A Psychoanalyst in the Field: Erikson’s Contributions to Anthropology,” in Childhood and Selfhood. Essays on Tradition, Religion, and Modernity in the Psychology of Erik H. Erikson, pp. 147–188. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1979. “Dreaming in Kagwahiv: Dream Beliefs and their Psychic Uses in an Amazonian Culture.” Psychoanalytic Study of Society 8: 119–171.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1987a. “Encounter with Other Cultures: Psychological and Epistemological Aspects.” Ethos 15(1): 58–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • — 1987b. “‘Everyone Who Dreams Has a Bit of Shaman’: Cultural and Personal Meanings of Dreams—Evidence from the Amazon.” Psychiatric Journal of the University of Ottawa 12(2): 65–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Laughlin, Robert M. 1976. Of Wonders Wild and New. Dreams from Zinacantan. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, no. 22. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leiris, Michel. 1934. L’Afrique fantome. Paris: Plon (Terre Humaine).

    Google Scholar 

  • LeVine, Sarah. 1981. “Dreams of the Informant about the Researcher: Some Difficulties Inherent in the Research Relationship.” Ethos 9: 276–293.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lincoln, Jackson S. 1935. The Dream in Primitive Cultures. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loewald, Hans. 1986. “Transference-Countertransference.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 34(2): 275–288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lowie, Robert. 1966. “Dreams, Idle Dreams.” Current Anthropology 7(3): 378–382.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mahrer, Alvin R. 1989. Dream Work in Psychotherapy and Self-Change. New York: W.W. Norton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1927. Sex and Repression in Primitive Society. New York: E. P. Dutton.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1967. A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marriott, Alice. 1952. Greener Fields. Garden City: Dolphin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • McDowell, John Holmes. 1989. Sayings of the Ancestors. The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky

    Google Scholar 

  • Meggitt, Mervyn J. 1962. “Dream Interpretation among the Mae Enga of New Guinea.” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 18: 216–220.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Merrill, William. 1987. “The Raramuri Stereotype of Dreams,” in Dreaming. Ed. Barbara Tedlock, pp. 194–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nadar, Laura. 1970. “Research in Mexico,” in Women in the Field: Anthropological Experiences. Ed. Peggy Golde, pp. 97–116. Chicago: Aldine.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ortner, Sherry B. 1984. “Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 26(1): 126–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Palombo, Stanley R. 1978. Dreaming and Memory: A New Information Processing Model. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Persinger, M. A. 1988. “Psi Phenomena and Temporal Lobe Activity,” in Research in Parapsychology. Ed. L. A. Henkel and R. E. Berger, pp. 121–156. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow.

    Google Scholar 

  • Persinger, M. A. and Stanley Krippner. 1989. “Dream ESP Experiments and Geomagnetic Activity.” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 83: 101–116.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roseman, Marina. 1986. “Sound in Ceremony: Power and Performance in Temiar Curing Rituals.” Ph.D. diss. in anthropology, Cornell University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roseman, Marina. 1990. Healing Sounds: Music and Medicine in Temiar Ceremonial Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scheff, Thomas J. 1986. Towards Resolving the Controversy over ‘Thick Description.’” Current Anthropology 27: 408–410.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, David M. and Lauriston Sharp. 1969. The Dream Life of a Primitive People: The Dreams of the Yir Yoront of Australia. Anthropological Studies, no. 1. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silverstein, Michael. 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description,” in Meaning and Anthropology. Ed. Keith Basso and Henry Selby, pp. 11–55. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Staff, Vera S. 1975. Remembered on Waking: Concerning Psychic and Spiritual Dreams and Theories of Dreaming. Crowborough, Sussex: Churches Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stephen, Michele. 1989. “Dreaming and the Hidden Self: Mekeo Definitions of Consciousness,” in The Religious Imagination in New Guinea. Ed. Gilbert Herdt and Michele Stephen, pp. 160–186. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, William Oliver. 1949. The Mystery of Dreams. New York: Dodd, Mead.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tedlock, Barbara. 1981. “Quiche Maya Dream Interpretation.” Ethos 9: 313–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • —. 1987a. Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • —. 1987b. “Zuni and Quiche Dream Sharing and Interpreting,” in Dreaming, pp. 105–131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tedlock, Dennis. 1979. “The Analogical Tradition and the Emergence of a Dialogical Anthropology.” Journal of Anthropological Research 35: 387–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • —. 1990. Days from a Dream Almanac. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tolaas, Jon. 1986. “Vigilance Theory and Psi. Part 1: Ethnological and Phylogenetic Aspects.” Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 80: 357–373.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tolaas, Jon. 1990. “The Puzzle of Psychic Dreams,” in Dreamtime & Dreamwork. Ed. Stanley Krippner, pp. 261–270. Los Angeles: Jeremy P.Tarcher.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor. 1974. “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors,” in Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, pp. 23–59. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ullman, Montague, Stanley Krippner, and Alan Vaughan. 1973. Dream Telepathy. New York: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallace, Anthony C. 1959. “Cultural Determinants of Response to Hallucinatory Experience.” AMA Archives of General Psychiatry 1: 74–85.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Barbara Tedlock
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Kelly Bulkeley

Copyright information

© 2001 Kelly Bulkeley

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Tedlock, B. (2001). The New Anthropology of Dreaming. In: Bulkeley, K. (eds) Dreams. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-08545-0_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation