Dreams in head-injured patients

It is commonly believed that patients following severe head injury tend to dream less than before the injury. In order to evaluate this assumption 51 married head injury patients were interviewed about the frequency and content of their dreams before and after injury. Dreams with threatening content and dreams with manifest sexual content were especially analysed. The results indicate that the overall incidence of dreams in the late post-traumatic phase was similar to the pre-injury era. Threatening dreams were almost significantly more frequent after injury, and the reported incidence of dream with sexual manifest content decreased significantly post-injury. It is suggested that the dynamic mechanism for this phenomenon in head-injured patients is different from that found in the post-traumatic neurosis syndrome.