On the Sources and Determinants of Hypnotic Dreams *

When a person who has been hypnotized is told that he will have a dream, he subsequently states that he has had a dream, and reports it to the experimenter. The subject may be instructed to experience a dream while in hypnosis, or post-hypnotically during the night in sleep. He may be told simply to "have a dream," or the instructions may include specific suggestions as to its content. The subject may be told, for example, that he will "dream about" a word, a phrase, or a described experience. "Dreams" obtained in these ways, directly in hypnosis or post-hypnotically in sleep, and with or without the introduction of suggestions as to their content, are "hypnotic dreams." They have found their widest applications in the investigation of dream symbolism (9, 7, 6) and as an adjunct in psychotherapy employing hypnosis (1, 3). Hypnotic dreams resemble spontaneous night dreams in form and content and in their being characterized by condensation, displacement, and symbolization. These similarities have led most investigators to consider them indistinguishable from spontaneous night dreams.' In trying to understand the meaning of a hypnotic dream, the stimuli offered to the subject prior to the dream have been regarded as "shaping the latent thoughts" and "giving rise to the dream wish (4)." The manifest content of the hypnotic dream has been studied as a disguised representation of a presumably predetermined, known latent content." Some workers, however, have been interested in the possibility that hypnotic dreams are subject to other influences in addition to the experimenter's suggestions as to their content. Schroetter (9), in his efforts to analyze hypnotic dreams, used his knowledge of the subjects' concerns, friendships, and experiences. Farber and Fisher (2) noted that the hypnotic dreams obtained were different when a woman was present while the experiments were being conducted. Nachmansohn (6) obtained some associations to the hypnotic dreams he elicited, and related the hypnotic dreams obtained to his understanding of each subject's personality. There has, therefore, been some recognition of the influence on the hypnotic dream of the personality structure of the subject and of his experiences and current life situation. Despite these observations, however, hypnotic dreams continue to be regarded as simple disguised representations of previously suggested stimuli.