Tony Crisp Interpretation:
In his book Our Dreaming Mind, Robert Van de Castle describes research he did on the subject of menstruation and dreams, with the help of nursing students in Miami. He found that the dreams changed their character with the different phases of the menstrual cycle. Prior to ovulation the dreams showed more male characters appearing. The dreamer showed interest in these males and found them appealing. Women appearing in the dreams of this phase tended to be pushed into the background of the dream events, and were often shown as competing with the dreamer. Following ovulation the dreams tended to depict men as less attractive, and the dreamers feeling some hostility toward them. The women in the dreams were people the dreamer tended to develop working relationships with. See premenstrual tension.
Wanting to know more about why these situations changed sleep need, Hartmann went on to study dream sleep in a group of women who suffered premenstrual tension. This group were prone to depression and irritability during PMT. Records show there is an unusually high rate of murder, suicide, and admission to psychiatric hospitals during this time. Although Hartmann found this group needed a little more sleep time than a control group, the main feature of change was their increased need for dreaming. Their length of time spent in dreaming increased in relationship to their depression. The conclusion reached was that one of the functions of dreaming is to help deal with difficult states of emotion or anxiety. See .