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

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.