Women’s Natural Propensity For Dreaming
It is believed that women have a more natural propensity for dreaming. Interestingly, women have more propensity for dreaming lucidly. It has been speculated that the neurological organization of the female brain predisposes them to be able to dream lucidly, or remember their dreams, more easily than men. This does not mean men are not capable of it, but perhaps they have to work a little harder at it.
It is believed that the female hormones are closely linked. It is possible that high estrogen levels may have something to do with it. It is a known fact that women are better dream recallers, and they have more dreams to report whenever a study on dream recall is done.
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Dreams (1988) by Patricia Garfield, Ph.D., details this information precisely. She says, “The amount women dream, as well as their recall of dreams, fluctuates with the stage of their menstrual cycle. Researchers occasionally report that the peak of dreaming, and memory of doing so, occurs between ovulation (when estrogen is high) and the onset of menstruation (when estrogen is low), Older women who take estrogen to replace their own diminished supply also sometimes report that their amount of dream recall varies during the month. Investigators studying menopause find that post-menopause women who ingest estrogen, to replace their diminished supply, dream more than those who do not take the hormone.”
Garfield continues her prose about women’s superior creative qualities in the field of dream recall by quoting researchers who “routinely report that pregnant women, especially in the second trimester, recall their dreams even more readily than women who are not pregnant. This finding is, I believe, an important clue to women’s apparently superior dream recall... Some researchers think that women who are pregnant dream more than at any other time in their adult lives. Probably because the female sex hormones are at flood level during her pregnancy, the woman is served a banquet of dreams. This bountiful feast of REM sleep often results in more remembered dreams than usual.”