What's PMID?

PMID is the Personalized Method for Interpretation of Dreams. It is a ground breaking process developed by Evelyn Duesbury during thesis research.

Duesbury and colleagues refined the model during three more research projects (Van Doren & Duesbury, 2000, 2005–2006; Okocha & Duesbury, 2005–2006) and four explorations (Van Doren & Duesbury, 2001; Duesbury, Bynum, and Van Doren, 2002, 2003, 2004).

These projects on use of the PMID Model show significant increases in a high percentage of participants’ abilities to discover:

1. Clear connections between dreams and waking-life activities, thoughts, and emotions to better understand and respond to life experiences.
2. The dreamer’s own personalized meanings for dream phrases—strings of words in the dream.
3. Accuracy of the dreamer’s waking-life appraisal of emotions about the issue in the dream.
4. Possible solutions to problems, including changing (or affirming) thoughts attitudes, or behaviors.
5. Reflections of the dreamer’s past and current reactions to family and other relationships that may be inhibiting the dreamer’s natural reactions, and thus help the dreamer change her or his reactions during current experiences.

With the PMID model the dreamer, either facilitated by a counselor or working alone, studies his or her dreams about major relationships instead of meeting with others in the system of relationships to discuss concerns. Assigning meaning and not blame is a major benefit in moving onward in overcoming stress instead of becoming stuck in blaming. It is not a matter of who is at fault—it’s a matter of changing who we can change most successfully--our own selves.

The technique was originally developed for use by practicing counseling and psychotherapy professionals to more effectively work with client's dreams, by giving professionals tools to help people understand their own dreams — a much more effective approach than the typical experience of counselors interpreting dreams for the client. The technique was also offered as an online Dream Interpretation course during an interim between developing the PMID model and researching it beyond the thesis. Read students' reaction to the PMID process.

Our continuing research shows that the PMID dream interpretation method is easily useable and useful for experienced and inexperienced dreamworkers and is adaptable to all dream types, including relationship dreams, as well as everyday dreams, and numinous dreams. Our research also shows that the PMID dream interpretation method monitors changes in thoughts, attitude and behavior over time to provide ongoing feedback to individuals about their ongoing growth and development.