The hypnotic dream : its relation to nocturnal dreams and waking fantasies

Neurophysiological studies have found that electroencephalogram (EEG) and other physical measures indicate that the person having a hypnotic dream is much closer to a relaxed waking state than to any stage of sleep. The only exception to this generalization is that Rapid Eye Movements (REM) are sometimes observed in the hypnotic dreamer. Characteristics of content of hypnotic dreams are less clearly established. Previous literature tends to conclude that hypnotic dream content is either identical to nocturnal dreams on the basis of theoretical assumptions or very dissimilar on the basis of physiological studies.

The present study examined some comparative characteristics of hypnotic dreams, nocturnal dreams, and waking fantasies from the same subjects. Subjects were divided equally by both gender and deep versus medium trance. Eight-hundred and forty-seven "dream" reports were gathered from 16 subjects over a 6-week period. The reports were rated by two raters who did not know what type of "dream" they were rating. The characteristics rated included the types of characters in the dreams, setting, distortion versus logical storyline, themes of anger, fright, sadness, happiness, or sexuality on the part of the dreamer, activity versus iii

iv passivity on the part of the dreamer, hostility or friendliness on the part of other characters, and the presence of planning activity or unelaborated memory. High reliability between raters was obtained. Length of report in words and REM accompaniment were also noted.

Results indicated that there is a significant difference between the hypnotic dreams of medium and deep trance subjects. Deep trance dream reports appeared similar to nocturnal dream reports on all characteristics rated. Medium trance dreams fell somewhere between nocturnal and daydreams on most of these measures. Present results were discussed in terms of the implications for utilization of hypnotic dreams in psychotherapy. While many of the techniques of interpreting nocturnal dreams may be appropriate to deep trance dreams, techniques for utilizing medium trance hypnotic dreams should be ones specifically designed for that purpose, such as Sacerdote's 1967 method.