Premium
Dreaming and insomnia: Dream recall and dream content of patients with insomnia
Author(s) -
SCHREDL MICHAEL,
SCHÄFER GERARD,
WEBER BETTINA,
HEUSER ISABELLA
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of sleep research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.297
H-Index - 117
eISSN - 1365-2869
pISSN - 0962-1105
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2869.1998.00113.x
Subject(s) - dream , psychology , lucid dream , content (measure theory) , recall , insomnia , stressor , clinical psychology , psychiatry , developmental psychology , psychotherapist , medicine , cognitive psychology , traditional medicine , ganoderma lucidum , mathematics , ganoderma , mathematical analysis
The present study investigated dream recall frequency and dream content of patients with insomnia in comparison to healthy controls. Patients’ dream recall frequency was elevated, due mainly to their heightened frequency of nocturnal awakenings. Dream content seems to reflect waking life stressors found in these patients, i.e. dream emotions were more negative and dreams were characterized by themes of depression, ‘negatives’ in self‐description and health themes. Patients taking antidepressants showed lower dream recall frequency than patients without any medication; benzodiazepine intake, however, did not affect dream recall frequency. Both drug groups reported more positively toned dreams than drug‐free patients. It is suggested that future studies should use more dreams per subject in order to reduce error variance of the dream content measures and more detailed measures of waking life stress.