RENOWNED SCHOLAR DISCUSSES HIS RESEARCH ON DREAMS AND THE "POWER ELITE" DURING PUBLIC LECTURE APRIL 27
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Like a parent asked to choose a favorite child, G. William Domhoff won't say if he prefers his work on dreams or his research on the power of the corporate rich. Domhoff, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has devoted his career to the study of both subjects. On April 27, the public is invited to hear Domhoff discuss his life's work at 8 p.m. in the Performing Arts Theater on the UCSC campus.
Domhoff is presenting the 28th Annual Faculty Research Lecture, an honor bestowed by the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic Senate to recognize outstanding work by a faculty member.
Domhoff, who joined the UCSC faculty in 1965 as a founding member and is now serving as acting dean of the Division of Social Sciences, uses an objective, quantitative method to study dreams. "Unlike Jungians or Freudians, we only look at other dreams to understand a dream," says Domhoff. The method gives an accurate picture of an individual by revealing his or her concerns, beliefs, self-esteem, and relationships with family and other significant people, says Domhoff.
"If we have 100 dreams from the same person--whom we've never met--we can make accurate predictions about a number of things," says Domhoff, who "scores" dream content by tabulating factors such as the number of male and female characters, the frequency of recurring themes, and elements such as aggression and victimization. Those scores are compared to set standards, or norms, that have been developed and replicated four times by researchers since 1950. "We've found that there is definite continuity between dreams and waking thoughts, and between dreams and waking behavior," says Domhoff.
This method, called the Hall/Van de Castle coding method, was developed in part by Domhoff's mentor Calvin S. Hall. Domhoff, whose work includes cross-cultural dream analysis, says the method is a powerful tool that can be used to analyze an individual's dreams, to compare the dreams of men and women, and to learn about groups by collecting the most recent dream of 100 people in a certain group and comparing those dreams to the norm.
Domhoff is the author of twelve books, including "The Mystique of Dreams: A Search for Utopia Through Senoi Dream Theory" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), and a just- completed comprehensive manuscript on dream research titled "Do Dreams Have Meaning? A Quantitative Approach to an Age-Old Question."
Domhoff's dream research marks a return to a subject he pursued early in his career. During the turbulent civil rights era, Domhoff set aside his dream work to study the power of America's elite. His book "Who Rules America?" (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967) became a classic in the field of sociology. Domhoff mapped the structure of the upper classes in the United States, showing the institutional links among members of the "power elite" and how they influenced government policy-making through their support of foundations, think tanks, blue-ribbon commissions, and institutes at prestigious universities.
"The links aren't obvious, but they're not secret, either," says Domhoff. "Americans as a group are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of the power elite, but the rich are in fact a very cohesive group that attends the same schools, goes to the same clubs, vacations at the same summer resorts, and shares a view of the world."
Domhoff says his book, and the sequel "Who Rules America Now? A View for the '80s" (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983), are his responses to people who don't believe that a wealthy few control the United States. Yet he says he did not find the projects disillusioning. "I think if you understand what's going on, you've got a chance of dealing with it," he says. "The reason the elites are in power is that they're slightly better organized than the rest of us, and they have the resources to put in critical places. The paradox is that Americans have enormous individual freedom and rights--we can believe what we want, wear what we want, and act the way we want to act--but that doesn't automatically translate into political power. Ordinary Americans are less organized in terms of social power than people in any other advanced industrial society."
Domhoff, who has announced that he will retire this year, will discuss both areas of research during the lecture that he has dubbed his "swan song."
"My work on power has had a greater impact and is much better known, but in the long run, I'll bet my dream research stands just as tall," says Domhoff.
(This release is also available on UC NewsWire, the University of California's electronic news service. To access by modem, dial 1- 209-244-6971.)
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