Nocturnal Omissions: Steps Toward a Sociology of Dreams

Abstract

The examination of dreams should properly be a legitimate topic of sociological investigation. We argue that there are four basic principles of dream‐life that suggest that dreams are external to the individual mind and are collective enterprises: 1) dreams are not willed by the individual self; 2) dreams reflect social reality; 3) dreams are public rhetoric; and 4) dreams are collectively interpretable. With the development of sociological approaches that examine topics previously defined as psychological, such as the sociology of emotion and cognition, the seemingly idiosyncratic components of these nocturnal productions should not exclude them from social analysis.