What is it about?
Psychotherapists have used dreams to understand and help their clients since the era of Freud. Sometimes dream work is used to help clients understand themselves and their relationships; other times it is used to alleviate the nightmares that often happen after someone has suffered a trauma. This review article describes several methods for working with dreams and nightmares, gives examples of these methods, and reviews the research on how the methods work.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that working with dreams helps clients explore their issues more deeply, and it helps them to find greater meaning in their dreams. Our review also showed that nightmare therapies that have clients talk about the details of their nightmares and then "rescript" (change) them as well as nightmare therapy that focuses on rescripting but avoids nightmare details can both help to reduce the number and intensity of nightmares, sleep problems, and other symptoms of posttraumatic stress.
Perspectives
I hope this article will help therapists and researchers better understand the various approaches available for working with dreams and nightmares and that it will encourage further research interest, particularly on the efficacy of treatments for posttraumatic nightmares.
Patricia Spangler
Uniformed Services University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Working with dreams and nightmares: A review of the research evidence., Psychotherapy, April 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pst0000484.
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