Trauma and Dreams

By: Deirdre Barrett

Book Overview

According to the poet Elias Canetti, "All the things one has forgotten / scream for help in dreams." To the ancient Egyptians they were prophecies, and in world folklore they have often marked visitations from the dead. For Freud they were expressions of "wish fulfillment," and for Jung, symbolic representations of mythical archetypes. Although there is still much disagreement about the significance and function of dreams, they seem to serve as a barometer of current mind and body states.

In this volume, Deirdre Barrett brings together the study of dreams and the psychology of trauma. She has called on a distinguished group of psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers--among them Rosalind Cartwright, Robert J. Lifton, and Oliver Sacks--to consider how trauma shapes dreaming and what the dreaming mind might reveal about trauma. The book focuses on catastrophic events, such as combat, political torture, natural disasters, and rape. The lasting effects of childhood trauma, such as sexual abuse or severe burns, on personality formation, the nature of memories of early trauma, and the development of defenses related to amnesia and dissociation are all considered. The book also takes up trauma and adult dreams, including Vietnam veterans and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Holocaust survivors and perpetrators, rape victims, and firestorm survivors. Finally, this volume concludes with a look at the potential "traumas of normal life," such as divorce, bereavement, and life-threatening illness, and the role of dreams in working through normal grief and loss.

Taken together, these diverse perspectives illuminate the universal and the particular effects of traumatic experience. For physicians and clinicians, determining the etiology of nightmares offers valuable diagnostic and therapeutic insights for individual treatment. This book provides a way of juxtaposing the research in the separate fields of trauma and dreams, and learning from their discoveries.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674006909
• ISBN13: 9780674006904
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent if you have nightmares or know someone who does

This book has a fair bit even about general nightmares and will be of interest to anyone who suffers from them or has a child or friend who does. However, the majority of it is about how trauma affects dreaming and how you can intervene--on your own or with a therapist to change post-traumatic nightmares and recover good sleep and a happy dream life. Some chapters are about domestic violence, some about accidents, others about war veterans, so it's applicable to all sorts of trauma. Some is most relevant if you are a therapist working with other people's dreams, but most of it is highly readable to the general public. Recommend Highly!

Best book on this topic, a classic!

When this book came out more than 10 years ago, nothing else existed on the effects of psychological trauma on dreams. Now there are many books and magazine articles dealing with the topic, but they're mostly recycling material from Trauma and Dreams. When looking up something in it recently, I was reminded how thorough and well-written it is. T & D has the clearest description of how one can transform recurring nightmares into positive, mastery dreams with imagery rehearsal. The examples in this book--both of the original nightmares and the later healing dreams--are richer and better described than I've seen anywhere. As another reviewer mentioned, there are several chapters which are so dense with research findings and details of theraputic techniques that probably only psychologists want to read them, but most chapters are highly readable and it's still the best book for PTSD nighmare suffers themselves as well as clinicians treating them.

Terrific resource on post-traumatic nightmares!

I'd already ordered this book before the Sept 11th disasters, but it's uncanny how much is relevant to what we're experiencing right now, and what we may have to come if there's a longterm war. It covers all kind of traumas: child abuse, rape, war, kipnapping, political torture, terrorism and natural disasters. It's got great insights into the similarities and the differences between these groups, their nightmares and other effects of the different traumas. It tells a lot about how traumas cause nightmares, but also about how you can use your dreams to conquer both nightmares and also waking symptoms of the trauma. Many of the stories are terribly sad, but there's a lot that's inspirational about people overcoming traumas.Some of the chapters are written beautifully, they have lots of dream examples and good advice. Anyone who's suffered a trauma or who has nightmares would get a lot from reading the book. A few chapters do come across like a textbook full of facts and figures. Even in these, the information is important and they have a biography of anything else you'd want to read about psychological issues of more specific traumas--child abuse, rape, war, terrorism, etc. It's worth getting even if you skip the most reference-like chapters because it's mostly very, very good.

Excellent reference on the role of dreams in PTSD

Deirdre Barrett has done a valuable service for all psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and mental health professionals who work to help the victims of trauma. Her book demonstrates vividly, and often movingly, how dreams and nightmares can play a key role in the treatment of people suffering the effects of various kinds of catastrophic experiences such as sexual abuse, natural disaster, wartime combat, and political torture. Moreover, the book suggests that studying the common themes and patterns in the nightmares of trauma victims can teach us new things about the general nature and functioning of dreams. As Barrett says in her introduction, "Even though much clinical data relating dreams and trauma have been gathered in recent years, this information has for the most part been reported only in presentations at professional meetings while little has been written on this topic. A tendency toward segregation is also evident, with half of the data presented to trauma societies and the other half to those for dreams. This book's purpose is to disseminate to dream analysts, trauma therapists, and other readers the work that exists at this interface." (p. 4) Trauma and Dreams makes good on its promise by collecting seventeen different articles written from widely divergent theoretical and clinical perspectives. Every one of the articles offers compelling case study material, thought provoking theoretical arguments, and practical suggestions about using drems to improve therapy and counseling for people who have suffered some kind of trauma. Among the book's many highlights are Kathleen Nador's comprehensive survey of children's traumatic dreams, Belicki and Cuddy's well-balanced evaluation of how sleep and dream patterns can help identify histories of sexual trauma, Wilmer's poignant Jungian analysis of the war dreams of Vietnam veterans, Aron's disturbing portrait fo the "collective nightmare" of Central American refugees, Zadra's careful review of the literature on recurrent dreams, and Barrett's own fascinating chapter on the dreams of people with multiple personality syndromes. Anyone who has an interest in the relations between dreams and severe psychological disturbance will find much to learn from this book. As with most edited anthologies, the wonderful diversity of voices in Trauma and Dreams also creates some difficulties. Many readers, while deeply appreciating the individual articles, may find it hard to integrate all the different perspectives presented here into some kind of overall understanding of the exact relationship of trauma and dreams. Most strikingly, what are we to make of the claim of Lavie and Kaminer, presented in their article on "Sleep, Dreaming, and Coping Style in Holocaust Survcivors," that for some trauma victims it is better to repress their dreams rather than remember and interpret them? On the surface at least, the Lavie and Kaminer theory about the value of dream repression seems to contradict t