Dream analysis of a constitutional psychopath: toward the problem of differential dream analysis
Karpman, B.
Psychoanalytic Review 33: 84 Passim
1946
ISSN/ISBN: 0033-2836 PMID: 21012985 Document Number: 12125
Though we have long been told that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, and have even been encouraged and urged by Freud to undertake further intensive studies of the subject, our understanding of dreams is still only at its beginning. Especially are we ignorant of differential studies of dream life. Such studies could give us a much deeper insight, not only into the relations between symptoms and symbols, but, more important yet, into the basic mechanisms and processes, than any other method available. Actually, very little is known about these, and nothing that is specific. Incidental comments on the differential aspects of dreams are found widely scattered throughout the literature of psychoanalysis, but for the most part they are confined to passing mention. We know in general that dreams of schizophrenics reproduce their daily waking thoughts and delusions, thus differing from those of hysterics, which are so clearly wishful expressions of ideas unrealized in waking life. The individual with irreversible dysfunction (paralysis or limping) dreams of himself as being entirely well, while the hysteric with a like limitation dreams of still having difficulty. We encounter mention of the danger and warning dreams of anxiety neuroses (Stekel); the blood curdling and terrifying dreams of epileptics (Kardiner); the castration and uterine symbolic dreams of female homosexuals (Helene Deutsch); those of male homosexuals who dream of being brides, being pregnant, and giving birth to children; the numerous polymorphous-perverse dreams of certain types of deep-seated mixed hysterical neuroses; the fire dreams of pyromaniacs (Stekel). According to Coriat " in certain cases of stammering, the early pregenital tendencies can be definitely outlined not only in clinical phenomena, as seen when attempts are made to speak, but also more clearly and almost literally, in dreams." Exhibitionists are said to have typical exhibitionistic dreams with emission (Karpman), while those who work with prisoners have recorded typical prison dreams in which the prisoner dreams of being free, able to commit perfect crimes without suspicion or detection.
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