The clinical use of dream content in modern psychiatry
Australasian Psychiatry January 2, 2025 David Plevin, Virginia Munro 1 citation
Dream content holds clinical and prognostic value for several neurological and psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy, REM sleep behavior disorder, dementia, the culture-bound syndrome of Latah, and substance use. A narrative review of the literature highlights the importance of dream phenomenology in clinical practice, building on the psychoanalytic tradition. The authors recommend that clinicians regularly inquire about dream content to improve diagnostic insights and formulations of patient presentations.