Meredith Puryear, one of the female staff members who was well known and liked by the campers, served as agent. She had a new baby that required intermittent attention during the night and she used these forced awakenings as an opportunity to look at the target picture several times during the evening. A different target picture was randomly selected by me each night and given to her after the campers had turned in for the night. The following morning when the campers arrived for breakfast at the dining hall, a set of 5 different pictures was lying out on a table. After examining the 5 pictures, each camper ranked them from 1 through 5, with 1 representing the picture that most closely corresponded to the dreams they remembered for that evening. If the target picture received a rank of 1 or 2 it was designated a "hit." A rank of 3 was ignored and a rank of 4 or 5 was considered a "miss." An overall total of 95 "hits" and 55 "misses" was obtained and there were more "hits" than "misses" on each of the four nights that we ran the study (10).

One night the target picture showed an underwater scene of a man with a scuba outfit swimming near the ocean floor where a treasure chest was located. The treasure chest was open and contained gold coins and necklaces that were dangling over the sides. Swimming around the chest were several angel fish and other tropical fish. Here are a few of the dream reports for that night:

Camper 1: I dreamed of a man swimming in water with his arms outstretched, not fully, but for balance, and there is some box-like object at his feet.

Camper 2: I dreamed of a necklace that is broken. The beads are scattered all over the floor. One gets lodged between the pages of a book in a bank. My other dreams that night were about sailing, rain, and water from a hose.

Camp Nurse: I am walking along the edge of a swimming pool with clear blue water. Suddenly I notice a beautiful angel fish lying by the side of the pool. It is flapping about, trying to get air. I gently pick it up and give it mouth-to-gill resuscitation and then return it to the water.

The nurse's dream is a beautiful example of how percipients will select from a target picture those aspects which possess personal significance for them. The nurse fused the element of the scuba diver and his artificial breathing device with the image of the angel fish. She then puts her own personal nursing touch upon it and creates a unique situation where she helpfully provides the fish with "mouth-to-gill resuscitation."