Dream seminar for chronic schizophrenic patients

A novel form of group therapy which I call the Dream Seminar was introduced on an inpatient milieu treatment unit for chronic schizophrenic patients at a Veterans Hospital. The purpose was to help patients understand and appreciate their dreams in a special group setting. It was hypothesized that the Dream Seminar would diminish insomnia and night fears, that the examination of dream experiences, no matter how bizarre or frightening, would be potentially healing, and that patients' attitudes toward dreams as well as delusions and hallucinations might change. It was also hypothesized that by limiting the focus of the Dream Seminar to the manifest dream content, the images and internal sequences of the dream, and by not allowing free association, the connective unconscious of the group would be brought into the open and balance the more conventional therapies of the rest of the program. This paper is a clinical report based on five years' experience with the Dream Seminar.