Do dreams have meaning? An empirical inquiry.

Three judges attempted to sort randomly selected dreams of normal college students and schizophrenic patients according to dreamer, night of occurrence, and sequential order within a night. Sorting was successful at statistically significant levels (which differed for the two groups) for all but the third task. The authors conclude that dreams are, as depth psychologists have assumed, orderly nonrandom events and that they reflect day-to-day changes in the life of an individual. They note that further work is needed to determine whether there is order among dreams of a given night.