Method:
The present inquiry is from one individual's dream dairy kept over a 26 month period. The author, "WN", was a 21-year-old African male who was living and pursuing undergraduate studies in the United States at the time the diary was written. WN's father was employed in diplomatic service and WN appeared to have travelled and lived in a variety of locales. At the time WN initiated his dream exploration and journaling he had an interest in "paranormal" dream occurrences such as out-of-body experiences (OBE). During the period of the record keeping (Feb. 21, 1989 thru March 27, 1991) WN read books related to dreams, altered states of consciousness, lucid dreaming, OBEs and related spiritual/philosophical issues. His diary was sent to the first author with permission to examine and write about it as she saw fit.
In a graduate course on research methods the first author used this diary (with all identities disguised) as a research project on qualitative methods. Because of the first authors previous position, it is methodologically important to point out that although she had skimmed the diary in order to hide the diarist identity she did not read it in any detail and was unaware of the direction the groups analysis would take until the end of the class. Thus it is unlikely that any prejudice of the first author played a significant role in the judges evaluations. In fact, the judges were initially put off by the "bizarre" content of the diary and had to be convinced that these sorts of experiences were in fact worth exploring both personally as well as in the form of a research question.
Following a brief lecture on lucid dreaming and related concepts (OBE's, false awakenings, dreams), the 12 female mental health graduate students broke into three groups of four students each according to major. The majors were Educational Psychology, Nursing, and Social Work. Each group consulted with the first author about their content analysis but were instructed to otherwise work on their own. Because of time constraints each group had to narrow the focus of their inquiries more so than might ordinarily be the case with a qualitative content analyses. But because each group focused on a different aspect much of the whole is retained.
Because this project was being done for course credit all groups were especially sensitive to methodological issues in their analysis. So, for instance, in order to keep in touch with personal biases group members would, as relevant, periodically meet to check their impressions, keep a log of personal reactions to the material, and make very clear individual bias relative to the sensitizing concepts they chose. Even their professional training was flagged as potentially a source of bias as their sensitivity to the differential use of dreams as counseling majors might drive the direction of the analysis.
Each group chose different sensitizing concepts which they demonstrated emerged from the diary. Group 1 choose states of consciousness and phase of dream diary to construct a three by seven typology. This group first divided the document into three phases:
1) an initial experimental/mechanistic phase (Feb. 21, 1989 thru Nov. 4, 1989 or about 8 months) 2) a middle transitional/theoretical phase (Nov. 17, 1989 thru Feb. 21, 1990 or about 3 1/2 months) 3) a final self-aware/reflective phase (Feb. 26, 1990 thru March 27, 1991 or about 13 months)
States of consciousness were drawn from WN's own categorization of his dreams/experiences and were:
1) OBE/Projection - a felt sense of being out of one's own body; 2) pre-lucid - false awakening; awareness of incongruities while dreaming; dreams about dreaming; 3) lucid - knowledge that one is dreaming while dreaming; 4) trance/hypnagogic - relaxed state in between waking and sleeping where one is no longer focused on external stimuli 5) dreams - includes nightmares and sleeping dream states not containing the characteristics of the four previous categories; 6) other - cannot be determined to fit into any of the above categories, includes substance induced altered states of consciousness; and 7) awake state - includes narrative and interpretive statements made by WN during the waking state.
In an attempt to understand his suicidal/depressive ideation, the second group felt that focusing on the spiritual and emotional aspects of WN's diary would be useful because of their apparent centrality to WN. Spiritual encounters is a broad term used to describe conventional representations of Christianity less conventional spiritual manifestations, as well as other undefined beings which emerged in WN's dreams. It was decided to use Christian concepts of the divine as it was clear from the subjects own comments that Christian cultural symbols were the ones which emerged in his diary. This did not preclude more ambiguous references such as bright light depending on context.
The categories for spiritual encounters were divine representations, such as church, God, heavenly beings and music, angels; undefined beings, such as presences, things, beings, bodies, an existence, someone; and evil representations, such as demons and dark man. The definition for emotional states is simply the feeling state that WN experienced in his dreams. The categories for emotional states are distressed/fear, no emotional impact and pleasant/appealing.
These position statements of the groups 2 members illustrate their bias and fairly well represent the breadth of reactions of all 12 student judges to this material:
Researcher 1:A Catholic, of the Christian faith.
"I believe something is driving him to explore. The question I had while reading this was whether or not he was seeking something to fulfill a part of him that was missing. While reading the document, the OBE experiences evoked fear in me."
Researcher 2: An agnostic religious viewpoint; "I believe there is a super power."
"I think his reading really embellished his true accounts of dream experiences. I'm not saying that I do not think they are real, I just think he may have exaggerated a bit and perhaps confused 'dreaming' with 'imagination'."
Researcher 3: A Christian of no particular faith.
"I do not think spiritual experiences (e.g., OBE's, fortune tellers, voodoo, etc.) are 'evil' in themselves; it is what people do with them that may become self-serving or evil. I think they are very real, very powerful; I'm intrigued. I must say though, that I am a bit annoyed that these experiences happen to people who seem to be depressed and in trouble. This looses both mystique and credibility for me."
Researcher 4: A devoted Lutheran of the Christian faith.
"This stuff really turns me on. I think it is a healthy way to pursue the potential of the human mind. My Mom hates this stuff and calls it the work of the devil. I was thrilled to read this diary but must admit it got a bit exhausting and out of hand."
The third group selected control/power for their sensitizing concept and focused on several specific dreams from each phase identified above. Additional word count analyses were done later to further develop the control/power dimension identified by group 3.