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I found that womens nightmares can be broadly divided into three categories, fearful dreams being chased or life threatened, losing a loved one or confused dreams. By corroborating dreams with actual life experiences for each participant it became evident that the anxieties about things that have happened in the past can reoccur many times as emblem dreams. Dr Parker continues, It is these emblem dreams that are particularly significant. If women are asked to report the most significant dream they ever had they are more likely than men to report a very disturbing nightmare. Women reported more nightmares and their nightmares were more emotionally intense than mens. We explored the dream reports by whether they were pleasant or unpleasant and this significantly changed findings. Both men and women were more likely to be the victim of aggressive interactions in unpleasant dreams. In pleasant dreams the dreamer was more often the aggressor. Women had more unpleasant dreams than men and unpleasant dreams contained more misfortune, self-negativity and failures. Womens dreams contained more family members, more negative emotion, more indoor settings and less physical aggression than mens dreams. The research discovered that when the natures of these categories were explored more interesting differences in reported behaviour during dreaming emerged. Men made more references to attacks, or serious threat but reported fewer verbally aggressive or covert acts of aggression. Men and womens friendly behaviour in dreams was the same; most often they reported helping other dream characters. Mens dream contained more references to sexual activity. Differences between men and womens sexual behaviour were that men reported more actual intercourse, while women reported more kissing and sexual fantasies about other dream characters. Dr Parker concludes, Each of these dream types has its own distinct subjectivity. It would not have been possible to identify this complexity using traditional approaches to dream investigation. The implication of these findings are far reaching for dream researchers and suggest that we need to think in more complex terms when describing dream report content.