Dream Content Analysis of Male Schizoprhenic Patients

This study explored two hypotheses — that the dream report content of groups are different from each other; and that with significant psychological change in a group there will be significant alteration in their dream report content. This study supported the first hypothesis — different groups do indeed have different dream report content (male paranoid schizophrenics compared to male college students); but did not support the second hypothesis — that with significant psychological change, dream report content altered (male paranoid schizophrenics before treatment and after improvement). The failure to support the second hypothesis may be related to the small number of content items compared and to the psychological states of the patients not being sufficiently different. It was possible to extract from the dream reports some areas of concern for the male paranoid schizophrenic patient, which suggested an avoidance of and a withdrawal from bodily concerns and interpersonal relationships. If there are before and after differences in dream report content they may be mostly related to the increase of active activities relative to passive ones following improvement and to a decrease in negative statements in the dream reports.