Gender Differences in Ego Functioning: Achievement and Affiliation in Manifest Dream Content

In Phase I of the study, eighteen undergraduates (10 females and 8 males), responded to a written questionnaire about family relationships and \ud child-parent identification. Phase II required subjects to record dreams within a 2-week period. Subjects were also asked to respond to a set of follow-up questions about their dreams. Predictions \ud were formulated within a psycho-social framework. It was expected that there would be \ud gender-specific differences in manifest dream content representative of differences in male/female \ud ego-functioning. The predictions pertained specifically to sex differences in achievement and \ud affiliation motivation:\ud It was hypothesized that females' dreams would contain more affiliation imagery, whereas males' dream would be more\ud achievement-oriented. It was also expected that these differences would be influenced by the nature of subjects'\ud rearing. Most of the significant findings related to predictions about achievement and affiliation dream\ud variables, and were consistent with the theories of Erikson,\ud Chodorow, Gilligan, and Horner. It was found that male subjects had proportionally more dreams related to\ud achievement than did female subjects, while females had proportionally more affiliation dreams