Trauma and Dreams / Edition 1

by Deirdre Barrett

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674006904
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	10/30/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	282
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 8.88(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Deirdre Barrett is Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a member of the faculty at Suffolk University. She is past President of the Association for the Study of Dreams, and Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Dreaming. She has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Deirdre Barrett

PART 1: DREAMS AFTER CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

1. Children's Traumatic Dreams Kathleen Nader

2. Dreams and Nightmares of Burned Children Frederick J. Stoddard, David S. Chedekel, and Laura Shakun

3. Identifying Sexual Trauma Histories from Patterns of Sleep and Dreams Kathryn Belicki and Marion Cuddy

4. The Use of Dreams with Incest Survivors Johanna King and Jacqueline K. Sheehan

5. Dreams in Multiple Personality Disorder Deirdre Barrett

PART 2: ADULT TRAUMA IN WARS AND NATURAL DISASTERS

6. The Healing Nightmare: War Dreams of Vietnam Veterans Harry A. Wilmer

7. Who Develops PTSD Nightmares and Who Doesn't Ernest Hartmann

8. Sleep, Dreaming, and Coping Style in Holocaust Survivors Peretz Lavie and Hanna Kaminer

9. Dreaming Well: On Death and History Robert Jay Lifton

10. The Collective Nightmare of Central American Refugees Adrianne Aron

11. Jasmine: Dreams in the Psychotherapy of a Rape Survivor Karen Hagerman Muller

12. Dreams of Firestorm Survivors Alan Siedel

PART 3: TRAUMAS OF NORMAL LIVING

13. Dreams and Adaptation to Divorce Rosalind D. Cartwright

14. Dreams in Bereavement patricia Garfield

15. Neurological Dreams Oliver Sacks

16. Integration and Ambivalence in Transplants Robert Bosnak

17. Recurrent Dreams: Their Relation to Life Events Antonio L. Zadra

References

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

Trauma and Dreams provides evidence that important information can be gleaned through examination of [PTSD] dreams… Barrett’s coverage of the subject is far-reaching, with dream research on war veterans, rape survivors, kidnapping victims, multiple personality patients, and traumatized children. Barrett also considers the connection between dreams and relatively commonplace traumas such as divorce and bereavement… Trauma and Dreams is well researched and includes contributions by several experts in the fields of trauma and dream analysis.

Choice

Trauma and Dreams is…an honest and compassionate book, based usually on direct clinical experience and mercifully free of second-hand-trauma-posturing by cultural studies professors.

Times Literary Supplement - Ben Shephard

Trauma and Dreams is...an honest and compassionate book, based usually on direct clinical experience and mercifully free of second-hand-trauma-posturing by cultural studies professors.
— Ben Shephard

Times Literary Supplement

Trauma and Dreams is...an honest and compassionate book, based usually on direct clinical experience and mercifully free of second-hand-trauma-posturing by cultural studies professors.
—Times Literary Supplement

Ben Shephard