The word Oneirology is built out of Oneiron: dreams and logica: making sense of. Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. Oneirology is about the study of the process of dreams, not the study of the content of dreams. The most common method used till this day is content analysis, using the Hall and van de Castle coding system. This system cracks up the dream in codes, making it easy for a researcher to analyze it. One down part is that the magic of the dream is lost. Bob van de Castle acknowledged that in his last discussion with me. Research is about facts.
Oneirology today has to do with dream content. One look at pubmed shows a lot of research by big names such as Domhoff and Bulkely. One of the most fascinating articles is about the wandering mind… Daydreaming is like dreaming, researchers Kieran Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Elizaveta Solomonova, and William Domhoff found out. So when a person says: I dream myself awake then he is not far from the truth. “In both states, content is largely audiovisual and emotional, follows loose narratives tinged with fantasy, is strongly related to current concerns, draws on long-term memory, and simulates social interactions.”
This reminded me of a study visualization I did several years ago. There is something called the Da Silva method. Da Silva developed a method of visualization that through breathing theaches you to relax your body, turn your eyes in a certain angle upwards and visualize desired outcomes. You would have to “fill” the inner pictures with emotions and sounds for it to be effective. I have always assumed this course made me a better dreamer.
