The use of dreams as a psychotherapeutic technique with brain injured patients

Reports of dreams elicited from brain-injured patients at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital in Israel were incorporated into the psychotherapeutic process. Our experience indicated that: It is possible to increase and enrich dream activity in quantity and in substance in the course of the treatment; This approach can affect all of the components of the personality which have been in regression after injury; Dream analysis does not require complex cognitive abilities and surmounts the special difficulty these patients have in using language and abstract concepts; It is possible to bring to the surface inner and subconscious contents residing in the patient that were ignored before; and The residual content of the premorbid personality is also expressed, thus facilitating the patient's inner contact between his former identity and his new one. This permits a renewed consolidation of the personality while making use of the psychic forces and parts which remained intact.