Date

1-14-2026

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Chair

Jamie Clark

Keywords

end of life dreams and visions, biblical dreams, nightmares, lucid dreaming, post traumatic growth, ZDPCS

Disciplines

Practical Theology | Psychology

Abstract

A grounded theory approach was used to conduct a study on participants (N=24) who were veterans with trauma-related dreams or who had a near-death experience. Research questions were designed to qualitatively examine the lived experiences of dreams and visions in a non-end-of-life setting. This allowed the data to give greater insight into the end-of-life phenomenon and deepen the body of knowledge on dreams and visions in general. A survey consisting of the PTGI-SF, LuCiD, NExS, and the Greyson NDE, along with open-ended survey questions designed to record dream narratives for a thematic analysis, was used. The dream narratives were coded using the Zurich dream process coding system, following the grounded theory model. The codes revealed themes, and these were compared to existing end of life and biblical dream themes. In the analysis of ELDV themes, there were 25 of the 36 themes represented and 13 of 16 of the Biblical dream themes. Themes were found to concentrate as well as saturate at different PTGI-SF scores, supporting that themes within a dream may relate to post traumatic growth. The sample size as well as limitations in the range of PTGI-SF scores, limit the findings and ability to read across to larger populations.

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