Which Dream Does the Patient Tell?

Introduction  A number of investigators utilizing the dream collecting technique of Aserinsky and Kleitman^1,2 and Dement and Kleitman^3,4 have demonstrated that individuals have episodes of dreaming 3 to 5 times a night. Goodenough et al.⁵ showed that even "nondreamers," when monitored by EEG and eye movement tracings and awakened throughout the night, report dreams several times a night.These observations are in marked contrast to clinical experience in which psychotherapists are accustomed to having one or two dreams, but rarely more, presented to them in psychotherapeutic sessions. The purpose of this study is to determine what factors of selection are operative in determining which dreams are told and which are not in a psychotherapeutic setting.

Method  Two subjects, 1 male hospital patient and 1 female volunteer graduate student of a nearby university, each slept overnight in a "dream laboratory" 2 times a