Can early childhood trauma be reconstructed from dreams? On the relation of dreams to trauma.

Abstract

Dreams are accorded a special position in the analytic reconstruction of early childhood trauma. Because dream content may be influenced by psychic trauma, analytic clinicians can, by interpreting dreams, reconstruct or revive memories of past trauma. In this article, I offer a critical review of the concept of a traumatic dream, the relation between dream content and trauma, and the use of dreams to reconstruct trauma. Two relations between trauma and dream content-called isomorphic and homomorphic-are explored. Evidence is slim for the existence of isomorphic dreams that exactly replicate traumatic experience. The rare inclusion of some literal elements of traumatic experience in dream content is most likely to occur in the dreams of people who were traumatized as adults and cognitively prepared for it. Homomorphic dreams recast the traumatic experience in metaphoric terms. No predictable relations can be demonstrated between specific experience and specific dream content. In the clinical situation, identifying a dream as based on trauma involves questionable selection criteria. The interpretative processes by which material reality is reconstructed from dreams are often based on the unsubstantiated assumptions that traumatic experience transfers literally into dreams and that literal dream elements can be distinguished from metaphoric or transformed elements. Ad hoc interpretive principles are applied to metaphoric content. Although actual trauma may be validly reconstructed from dream content, such reconstructions depend more on intuitive brilliance than on any systematic application of well-established relations between dream content and prior trauma.Dreams have long enjoyed a privileged position in psychoanalytic theory and clinical process. In recent times, the "royal road" provided by dreams leads not only toward the dynamic unconscious, but also toward memories Requests for reprints should be sent to C. Brooks Brenneis,

Conceptual Problems with the DSM‐IV Criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

“…For example, van der Kolk, Blitz, Burr, Sherry, and Hartmann (1984) popularized the notion that traumatic nightmares are often exact replicas-instant replays-of the sensory aspects of traumatic experiences. But as Brenneis (1994) pointed out, van der Kolk et al "based their 'exact replica' conclusion on the dreamers' statements of equivalence without collecting any dreams" (p. 432). Instead of having patients prospectively record their nightmares in a dream diary shortly after awakening, van der Kolk et al simply asked their PTSD patients during an interview whether their nightmares matched the combat events the patients had experienced in Vietnam.…”

Dream Dome: Do dreams shield the psyche in times of continuous stress?

“…This finding may reflect the traumatic response and the vulnerability of this group as well as corresponding to other findings in dream research regarding people who have experienced stress and trauma (Nadar, 1996;Brenneis, 1994;Varvin et al, 2012).…”

Memory Systems and the Psychoanalytic Retrieval of Memories of Trauma

“…Several studies (Pynoos and Nader, 1989;Rynearson and McCreery, 1993) demonstrate a marked amount of coloring from external sources in flashbacks. A study (Brenneis, 1994b) of published texts of trauma paired with corresponding dream texts revealed almost no literal similarity in content, although the dream content might quite aptly portray the trauma in metaphoric terms. A study (Brenneis, 1994b) of published texts of trauma paired with corresponding dream texts revealed almost no literal similarity in content, although the dream content might quite aptly portray the trauma in metaphoric terms.…”