When I reviewed my semi-structured interviews data, the data suggested three groups of participants based on the coping styles:

• Sensitizers. These individuals initiated radical life reforms in response to the diagnosis aimed at altering their basic character. Each of them mentioned a long-standing, if not lifelong, personal problem that heavily tainted their self-concept and sense of personal history. They viewed their cancer as an extension of a troubled history.
  

  Examples: (a) A 45-year-old female bank manager, who purchased a Harley-Davidson and joined a riding group. (b) A male with bipolar disorder gives away all his possessions, attempts to reconcile with a son he had not seen in years, and marries a woman with schizophrenia he met in the supermarket the prior week.
  

  Dreams of Sensitizers:
  

  AFFECT: NEGATIVE
  IMAGERY: REALISTIC
  

  The only nightmares reported during the study were reported by Sensitizers and each Sensitizer reported at least one nightmare. Each also reported having to cope with the lingering residue of the nightmare. The nightmares revisited or referenced a pivotal event in their troubled history.
  

• Repressives. These individuals denied that their cancer altered their lives in any way. They reported growing irritation with family members who stressed over their condition.
  

  Dreams of Repressives:
  

  AFFECT: NEGLIGIBLE/FLAT
  IMAGERY: DISTORTED/BIZARRE
  

  These were unemotional dreams in which past or present waking environments were markedly distorted or mis-represented. These rational patients often reported being embarrassed by these dreams, as if it reflected on them personally.
  

• Crisis-Induced Reactors. These individuals exhibited a measured response to disease symptoms or to revised prognoses from their oncologist.
  

  Dreams of Crisis-Induced Reactors:
  

  AFFECT: POSITIVE/EUPHORIC
  IMAGERY: REALISTIC
  

  Blood Chemistry:
  

  Blood chemistry differentiated two types of dream anomalies: process anomalies (violations of laws than cannot be replicated in waking reality; breaks in the fabric of normal experience) and content anomalies (the misrepresentation or distortion of elements unique to the waking routine of the dreamer, e.g., fireplace is in wrong location; cousin who attends UCLA is a USC student in the dream; wife has blond versus black hair).
  

  Analyses linked reports of process anomalies to a set of chemicals (e.g., glucose, creatinine, red and white blood cells) that share a critical role in the production of energy. It is believed process anomalies may result from surges in energy required to restore depleted oxygen to damaged heart or lung muscle tissue. Reports of difficulty breathing on The Quality of Life Inventory and the body's ability to manufacture glucose anaerobically (i.e., without oxygen) also fueled speculation.
  

  While process anomalies appear to accompany increases in red and white blood cells, content anomalies, by contrast, may accompany damaged red and white blood cells. The correlation of mean and total content anomalies with lactic dehydrogenase (LDH) buttress the observation that content anomalies appeared in the dreams of patients with blood malignancies and active lymphomas.
  

  Objective (Noumenal) vs. Subjective (Phenomenal)
  

  I observed a greater incidence of distorted dream characters in patients whose X-rays or toxicology reports indicated a poor prognosis for cancer. I observed a greater incidence of fictional dream characters in patients who reported appreciable symptoms of cancer (as indicated by a Quality of Life Inventory).
  

  DISCUSSION:

  
  

  Some patients received grim news from their physician concerning the prognosis of their cancer but did not report appreciable symptoms. By contrast, other patients reported symptoms and functional impairments but did not receive discouraging news from their physician concerning tumor growth or metastases. In both cases, patients capitalized on the ambiguity to exercise discretion and personality in designing coping strategies (e.g., repressives and sensitizers). The bizarre dreams of repressives may have compensated for their overly conservative coping strategy, reflecting cognitive processing aimed at predisposing the patients to broaden their attitudes to assimilate more facts about their cancer. The conservative nightmares of sensitizers (i.e., harkening back to painful memories) may have compensated for their overly progressive coping strategies, thwarting their attempted alienation from themselves and their pre-diagnostic history.
  

  But crisis-induced reactors reported both grim progress reports from their physician and appreciable, limiting symptoms. They were not as free to impose their own will and personality over their coping style, and their attitude accurately reflected the facts of their disease. They may have been rewarded with dreams that were both positive and realistic -- dreams devoid of the distorted imagery that bemused repressives and of the painful affect that haunted sensitizers.
  

  One explanation for the pattern of results is that dreams exercise a regulatory function within an antinomian (i.e., oppositionally-structured) psyche. Many theorists have proposed a balancing function for dreaming, but this compensatory function has been difficult to verify, and our failures to date, our neglect, distortion, and oversimplification is the fault of both the complexities of dreaming (and waking) life and the unproductive fussiness of modern psychological 'science.'
  

  • insisting out of the gate on controlled experimental research as an arbiter of questions about dreaming is counterproductive. Without exploratory research, we lack the scope and depth of factual information about dreaming necessary to frame the issues and produce the questions worth asking. Without this information, it is impossible to isolate for use in controlled experimental research the 'important variables' with which a person is likely to be concerned during sleep.
    

    Removing the static. However, by selecting cancer patients as research participants, I defined a relatively homogeneous group whose lives have been simplified by a singular threat. The compensatory function of dreaming would be most conspicuous under conditions in which the psyche is polarized by a form of stress that forces one to come to terms with one's identity, mortality, and with changes in multiple life domains. A disease like cancer is notorious for disrupting daily activities and ravaging one's financial, interpersonal, and physical status.
    

  • by subjecting research participants with diverse lives and personalities to standard stimuli (e.g. Tetris) for use as a common metric in the measurement of dream references to the common pre-sleep activity, as many sleep lab researchers attempt to do, we turn a blind eye to the life of the participant and base an answer to a mystery on something with no intrinsic value or lasting importance to the participant.
    

    Strengthening the signal. In my research, however, once I used a common threat (cancer) to define my research sample, I respected the integrity and individuality of each participant by allowing him or her to define the objects and activities of lasting importance and intrinsic value to his or her own life. This technique increased the width and length of my microscopic lens, so to speak, so I was more likely to notice the changes in the person's life that were covarying with characteristics of the dream experience.
    

  The study also has implications for the relationship between mind and body. As objective products of nature, dreams are the psychological equivalent of somatic processes in that they are refractory to the will. Thus any study that addresses the relationships between dream characteristics and biological processes, especially one in a population that provides a range of biological values (cancer patients), is likely to be sensitive and powerful. In light of this, I would advise psychological researchers that they need to get their hands dirty in the data of the dream experience and in its relationship with the waking life of the individual participant. Over-controlled and rigorous research is often the most simplified research, short-shrifting fact collection in the blind hope that the materiality of the instruments or the mathematical precision of the statistical formula will somehow distill the truth.
  

  Why the Study Worked
  

  This study worked the researcher's attitude toward science was as healthy as that of the crisis-induced reactors to their cancer. I realistically guaged the field's ignorance with respect to dreaming, where I estimated a 'crisis of knowledge.' Rather than submit to institutional pressures to form a (circumscribed) hypothesis that implies knowledge but that narrows our research unproductively from what, by real account, is a position of ignorance, I restricted my preconceptions to an open-ended pretheoretical framework that defined a generous scope and depth for the collection of all facts I needed to address a network of questions and make the most of hypothetical findings. Most psychological research is tantamount to idle thrashing due to poor planning and to lapses in the conceptualization of important contributors to the research: the phenomena under study, oneself as a researcher, the available research tools, and the best fit among them. There is a feeling of NFL game planning here, as I gathered all the information I needed to realistically assess my own strengths and those of the phenomena that present to me as obstacles so that I could benefit from my pre-game scheming and my halftime adjustments to hypothetical or fluid data formations. You have to approach a mystery like a block of marble from which you seek to chip away, guided by glimpses of the form hidden within. You have to start big. The null hypothesis testing system combined with our requirements for publication force us to start small, to assemble our form from rubble. Now if you're cutting up frogs or designing a better spatula on a grant from Consumer Reports, this approach may not prove destructive to your line of research, and unfortunately these materialistic, technical, and utilitarian research studies are increasingly defining modern Psychology due to the fact they lend themselves to the policies & procedures that allow us to most adroitly manage our affairs as a community and as an institution. But if you're interested in dreaming, or many other psychologistic phenomena, you have to make far too many sacrifices to yourself and to your subject matter if you want to manage your affairs in ways that preserve your career and that offer the community the kind of contributions it can digest.
  

  At various stages of the scientific inquiry we need contributions from human reasoning. Unfortunately, this is not an area that gets any quality assurance attention. The ability and inclination to contemplate, muse, reflect, and apply logic, to draw constructively from our experiences and imagination to build theories, or to just say 'what if?' are very important. These instincts are critical to the business of knowledge production in Psychology.
  

  Psychology professors know how to formulate hypotheses but they do not know how to think hypothetically. They know how to apply pre-conceived formula from a menu of Behavioral Science Statistics but they do not know how to reason quantitatively (i.e. to conceptualize relationships associated with a phenomenon in quantitative terms). Moreover, there was once a time when hypotheses were derived from sophisticated theories or understandings of human nature. In such cases, the hypotheses represent miniature encapsulations or representatives of the theories, testable predictions based on the theories. Today it would seem that psychology professors mass produce these highly circumscribed hypotheses from the outset, predictions uninformed by any theory or adequate survey of possibilities. The null hypothesis testing system provides them with a recipe, with few of the meals being cooked from scratch. And psychology professors are growing more agnostic with respect to any educated or individuated philosophy of science. They know a 2 x 2 design and analysis-of-variance (for example), and they simply reproduce research from this template without any broad understanding or what they're doing or of what else there is to do.
  

  Modern psychology professors have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. While they have a good case against the reified and dogmatic aspects of old psychoanalytic meta-theories (like that of Freud), they appear to use this argument as an excuse to suspend all manner of casual contemplation and reflection, the kind of quality thinking that lays the groundwork for data collection (i.e., "what do I want to know?;" "what kind of data will be most likely to shed light on my question?"; and "how do I go about acquiring it?").
  

  What Do I Want to Know?
  

  This is an important step in the scientific process because it identifies the scope of the investigation. I for one have a BIG question about a very NATURAL FRONTIER (i.e., dreaming). But most academics define the scope of their inquiry so narrowly that nothing of any interest is learned about the psyche. They do this for a few reasons: (1) they are interested in some pragmatic or utilitarian topic [e.g., aviation cockpit design]); (2) a highly circumscribed question lends itself more readily to that artificial scientific paradigm we call the 'null hypothesis testing system;' and (3) it also allows them to publish more frequently and in small units (articles of 3-4 pages that are more easily accommodated by journals), which is necessary to remain competitive in a saturated job market predicated on 'publish or perish.' ('Publish or perish' is actually misleading. In today's competitive market, the formula is to weight the number of publications by the reputation of their respective journals).
  

  Well, to get that interview for the tenure-track assistant professorship (and ultimately tenure), most candidates have had to publish in graduate school (usually as a sixth author of a four-page publication), publish more than once a year, receive funds for their research from some external agency, and present their findings at regional conferences, but it is usually articles that are of the 'so what?' variety or 'junk.' We are SPAMMING our body of knowledge with trade papers analogous to junk e-mail. And our questions do not reflect a childlike and intellectual curiosity about the psyche. They are not the questions of explorers, intellectuals, muses, or detectives, but of clerks and job hunters. In our SUVs, we are always looking for the quickest, smoothest, and most scenic route around the mountain, while we should be hiking over it.
  

  What kind of data will be most likely to shed light on my question?
  

  In my 'dreams of cancer patients research,' I began with the assumption that not much of anything is known about dreams. I admitted ignorance, reveled in the mystery, and embraced the prospect of discovery. Therefore, I designed a study that was so flexible and adjustable as to (1) efficiently provide me a wealth of information that I can consult if necessary. In so doing, I assumed that I would not necessarily need all this information nor know at the outset why I would need it. But it would be there. (2) Allow me to react to or follow-up on questions that arise DURING the process of analysis. I am assuming here as a detective and explorer that I may encounter data that will inspire me to shift direction slightly. In short, I want to design a study in which a WEALTH OF DATA can guide me in the development of a THEORY which, in turn, can re-orient me in how I approach and organize that same body of data. There were among my professors critics who demanded formal hypotheses and, once I porposed a few sham hypotheses, they demanded that the hypotheses pattern my whole plan for analysis. The hypotheses not only constrained my thinking, they blinded me to my data, but hey, it allowed me to credit other people in the field for their remotely related research. I don't know what it is about psychology professors and their citation fetish. My open-ended theoretical framework may not have met arbitrary requirements for parsimony and refutability, but then no theory should have to meet requirements that apply only to hypotheses. A theory only needs to be productive.
  

  How do I go about acquiring it?
  

  To realize my goal of a flexible approach that allows me to make use of maximum resources (DATA, THEORY), I need a lot of raw information. (I liken my research to one of those shells on the beach that are broad at its opening and progressively narrows to a closed point). I usually begin with an interview (and a semi-structured one at that permitted to vary in response [within certain constraints] to the individual nature of the answers provided me by my research participant). Of course, I had to overcome objections to semi-structured interview protocols. Psychology professors prefer standardized and psychometrically sound instruments to nimble thinkers. Rigor. Rigor. Rigor. Personally, I have certain guidelines regarding when not to put on a tuxedo. I don't wear one to bed. I don't wear one to breakfast. And I don't wear one when I'm replacing a sun pump. I'll wear one if and when I collect my lifetime achievement award. And no one's going to hand me an achievement award for a lifetime of modeling tuxedos.
  

  My data goes through many metamorphoses, but even as it changes form, it is never lost and can be revisited. This raw interview information is STEP 1. There is a lot of information here and it is as raw as it comes and by that I mean it is the actual and individualized responses to open-ended questions in a semi-structured interview. STEP 2 usually involves coding the information. After a review of it all, the data organizes itself (i.e., suggests a few category schemes based on typical patterns of responses unanticipated before the study was designed).
  

  This is critical. Academics want me to formulate a hypothesis and design a study to evaluate the hypothesis as 'right or wrong' (i.e., reject/fail to reject). The problem here is that the raw question, when transformed into a testable experimental hypothesis and then into the corresponding statistical hypothesis, loses its meaning and usually both its scope and depth. It becomes a dichotomous, one-dimensional (yes/no type) question, at which point the academics are interested only in adjudicating (answering) it, which assigns it a significance without a thorough understanding of the facts from which it is laundered (derived). If they reject the null hypothesis, they have a positive result and they can celebrate by writing it up for submission to a journal. Problem is, the original question on which the hypothesis was based never got examined. They acquire only as much data as necessary to answer the yes/no question statistically (through a very cookie-cutter set of analyses that yield what is known as an inferential test statistic). Frontiers are never settled, phenomena never explored, theories never built, and meaning never addressed. This science suffers from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
  

  So in STEP 2, my raw information is assigned codes or ratings, which can now be used in some statistical analysis. My analyses are usually of a descriptive or exploratory variety at first and, where I do use inferential test statistics like t or F or r, I then usually treat them as descriptive statistics and make them the raw data in subsequent analyses. Now by this point, I have also (in addition to interviews) administered a few questionnaires (which yield quantitative data from the outset), reviewed the levels of chemicals in their bloodstream as found in their medical charts, and collected 2 weeks worth of their dream material. I look for relationships among all this rich data, some of these analyses are purely exploratory and others guided by theories inspired by the patterns (typical clusters) of responses that emerged in the data. To extend the study, there is usually a post-dream-collection interview, which is not designed before the research is undertaken but during data collection to extend my knowledge. (For some reason, academics consider these post hoc adaptations as some kind of sordid cheating and fraudulence but it is just good detectivework. It seems to be okay when they do it as part of a follow-up study. They just consider that separate from the original study). In any case, this is how I conduct my research, and while it gets treated as a pilot study, it produces something we see so rarely in modern research: ideas worth testing, questions worth asking.
  

  But the most valuable decision I ever made was to respect the integrity and individuality of my research participants, treating each as a separate case in a series of n = 1 experiments...drawing conclusions WITHIN individuals before abstracting ACROSS individuals. I hope the impending (and rather ugly) mixing of metaphors will illustrate the butchery that is modern psychological research...but my approach contrasts sharply with the modern method of statistically sausage-grinding decontextualized 'observations' harvested from human livestock like chaffe from wheat.