ABSTRACT
Cases with global cessation of dreaming were identified by question 2 of the interview schedule. Definite answers were given by 321 patients (11 were excluded due to equivocal responses). Of these, a full 112 patients reported that they had stopped dreaming completely since the onset of their illness. (In addition, 1 of the 29 control subjects reported global cessation of dreaming. This patient is discussed separately later.) This is an incidence of 34.9%, which is much higher than the 1.1% incidence recorded for nonvisual dreaming. Evidently Murri et al. (1984)—who did not distinguish between global cessation of dreaming and nonvisual dreaming—were both right and wrong when they remarked that the Charcot–Wilbrand syndrome may be “not as rare as it is presently considered to be” (p. 185). Certainly Wilbrand’s variant of the syndrome is far from being rare.
