Dream Content Study in Chronic Schizophrenics and Normals by RE MP-A wakening Technique

Abstract

There has been a relatively few studies on the dreams of psychotic patients though the new technique of studying dreams during the rapid eye movement period of sleep (REMP) has been established in these 10 years. The present study was performed on 21 schizophrenics and 34 normal subjects to investigate the nature of content of dreams collected by using the technique of awakening the subject during REMP. In schizophrenic subjects, the latency of dream reporting was longer, the length of time of the spontaneous dream reporting was shorter and a larger number of examiner's supplementary questions was necessary than in normal subjects. The rate of dream recall in the next morning was lower in schizophrenics. Analysis of the sentence of the dream narratives revealed that, in schizophrenic subjects, the number of words as well as conceptual elements (clauses) in a spontaneously reported dream narrative was much smaller than that of normal subjects. As to the nature of the dream content in schizophrenic subjects, the incidences of coherent dream, complex dream, and dreams with bizarre elements were lower than those of normal subjects. The incidence of dream with color was higher in the schizophrenic subjects. There was no significant difference in the incidence of experimental elements in the dream content between schizophrenics and normal subjects. No significant difference was found in the number of characters per dream in schizophrenics and normals except for the lower incidence of a crowd of people in the former. As to the type of character in the dream, the incidence of family members was higher and that of friends lower in schizophrenics. The incidence of pleasant emotion in the dream was similar in normal and schizophrenics, whereas those of unpleasant feelings such as sadness, anger, fear and anxiety were higher in schizophrenics. As to the interpersonal emotional relationships in the dream, the tendency that the male dreamer was aggressive to male and friendly to female characters whereas the female dreamer was aggressive to male and aggressive as well as friendly to female characters, was observed in both normal and schizophrenic subjects. It was suggested that the features of dream reporting and dream content in the schizophrenic subjects seemed to reflect fairly accurately the characteristics of the inner experiences of schizophrenics.