Trauma and Dreams [Hardcover]

Deirdre Barrett (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0674905520 | ISBN-13: 978-0674905528 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

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 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 )

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.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; 1 edition (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674905520
• ISBN-13: 978-0674905528
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D. is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School's Behavioral Medicine Program. She Past President of both the International Association for the Study of Dreams and the American Psychological Association's Div. 30, The Society for Psychological Hypnosis. Dr. Barrett has written four books: The Committee of Sleep (Random House, 2001) and The Pregnant Man and Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch (Random House, 1998), Waistland (Norton, 2007) and Supernormal Stimuli (Norton, 2010). She is the editor of four additional books: Trauma and Dreams (Harvard University Press, 1996), The New Science of Dreaming (Praeger/Greenwood, 2007), Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (Praeger/Greenwood, 2010), and The Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams (Greenwood, 2012). Dr. Barrett has published dozens of academic articles and chapters on health, hypnosis, and dreams. She is Editor-in-Chief of DREAMING: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Dreams.
Dr. Barrett's commentary on psychological issues has been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, Fox, and The Discovery Channel. She has been interviewed for dream articles in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Life, Time, and Newsweek. Her own articles have appeared in Psychology Today and Invention and Technology. Dr. Barrett has lectured at Esalen, the Smithsonian, and at universities around the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference on the role of dreams in PTSD, April 7, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Trauma and Dreams (Hardcover)

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 the views of many of the book's other contributers, who argue that it's most therapeutically helpful for trauma victims to share and express their dreams and nightmares. I'm sure there are many good ways to resolve this contradiction; it just would have been interesting to hear the authors themselves, or the editor, address this and other broader questions raised by their various approaches to trauma and dreams. Trauma and Dreams is sure to become a standard reference book in the clinical use of dreams. As the book's contributors sadly demonstrate, we're living in a world where countless numbers of people are suffereing terribly from many, many different kinds of trauma. Barrett's collection gives us some excellent practical tools for the care and treatment of those people, and deepens our appreciation for the powerful role of dreams in healing and growth.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific resource on post-traumatic nightmares!, October 1, 2001

By 

Sarah (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trauma and Dreams (Paperback)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on this topic, a classic!, July 1, 2010

By 

Richard Aru - See all my reviews

This review is from: Trauma and Dreams (Paperback)

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.