ABSTRACT
The former refers to alternations in the dreaming process that may be seen as abnormal, whereas the latter refers to the dreams that are the concomitants of a mental disorder. Detailed phenomenological descriptions are needed of the dream experience in normal subjects and in the various psychiatric illnesses—both in and out of the laboratory—utilizing quantitative techniques in order to capture various aspects of the experience. The depressed patient was found to dream as frequently as the nondepressed, but the dreams were shorter and had a paucity of traumatic or depressive content, even after the depression had lifted. A dream that awakens the dreamer in a terrified state generally with accompanying frightening dream content—a nightmare—would be a psychopathologic dream. The amount of information available from 20 publications would be woefully inadequate for characterizing the dreams of psychopathologic groups.
