Primary process in dreams, attitudes towards dreams, and creativity

Abstract

The relationships between creativity (ideational fluency and adaptive regression), attitudes towards dreams, and primary process in dream reports were investigated in a sample of 106 graduate students. Significant correlations between a modified Wallach-Kogan (1965) creativity battery and primary process in dream reports (mean and total) originally emerged. Additionally, confirmation of a previously discovered factor structure (Livingston and Levin, 1990) for attitudes towards dreams pointed to two factors corresponding roughly to educated and mystical beliefs about dreams. Neither of these factors showed a significant relationship with creativity or primary process in dreams. Dream length was found to correlate significantly with both creativity and primary process in dreams: all associations between primary process in dreams and creativity were no longer significant once the effects of dream length were removed. Results are discussed with regards to the dimensionality issue in creativity measurement. Post hoc exploratory analyses suggest that several dream variables other than primary process manifestations may be able to significantly discriminate creative individuals: creative individuals reported significantly more vividness in dreams, movement in dreams, recalled more dreams from early childhood, had more intense aggression in dreams, and reported nightmares to be more real and vivid than their less creative peers.