Psychosomatic Medicine 34:313-320 (1972)
© 1972 American Psychosomatic Society

The Relationship of the Manifest Content of Dreams to Duration of Childbirth in Primiparae

¹ University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry

Address for reprint requests: Carolyn Winget, Department of Psychiatry, Cincinnati General Hospital, Cincinnati, Ohio 45229.

This report compares manifest dream content during pregnancy with subsequent duration of childbirth in primiparae. One hundred pregnant women were screened in a prenatal clinic to rule out potential complications of labor due to mechanical causes or disease processes. Recent dreams obtained from 70 of these women were scored for anxiety, threat, hostility, motility and themes of pregnancy. The scoring of the manifest dream content was compared with the duration of subsequent childbirth as assessed by Friedman's criteria. Both anxiety and threat were significantly most frequent in the dreams of the short labor group (under 10 hours) and least frequent in the dreams of the prolonged labor group (over 20 hours). The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the function of dreaming as an adaptive mechanism for coping with an impending normal life crisis.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				D. B. Carlson and R. C. Labarba Maternal Emotionality During Pregnancy and Reproductive Outcome: A Review of the Literature International Journal of Behavioral Development, December 1, 1979; 2(4): 343 - 376. [Abstract] [PDF]