Yutaka Yamada (Anthropology Ph.D.) explored life history narratives in which dreamsand healing experiences are episodic symbols. A narrative is a symbol, a medium which conveys a certain meaning and has its own symbolic structure. Leaders or members of religious groups narrate religious experiences such as possession, trance, visions, dreams, healings, conversion and various shamanic experiences.A symbolic anthropologist attempts to elucidate the major forms and meanings of the narratives and then to construct the underlying culture of thenarratives. Anthropologists start with analysis of the narratives, moves inductively beyond to more general patterns. Often whenthese narratives are compared it is found that certain groups of narratives display common cultural patterns; from these narratives, the culture of the narrators can be generalized.Symbolic Anthropology is a field of Cultural Anthropology which exploresnon-verbal and verbal symbols (e.g. narratives, dreams, myth, ritual, icons).Anthropologists examine the link between symbols and a society'scognitive structure, rules of moral conduct and patterns of socialinteractions. By studying the meaning and the structure (theinterrelationship of symbols), the anthropologist attempts to generalizethe culture of global societies.