Acta Neurologica Scandinavica
January 30, 2015
Brigitte Holzinger, Gerhard Klösch, B. Saletu
59 citations
Adding lucid dreaming training to Gestalt therapy reduces nightmare frequency more quickly and to a greater extent than Gestalt therapy alone. Thirty-two people who had nightmares at least twice a week were randomly assigned to ten weeks of either Gestalt therapy alone or Gestalt therapy plus lucid dreaming instruction. Both groups reported significantly fewer nightmares after treatment and at a three-month follow-up. Only the group receiving Gestalt therapy alone showed a significant drop in dream recall frequency. Sleep quality improved significantly for both groups at follow-up, but only the lucid dreaming group showed significant improvement immediately after therapy ended.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Brigitte Holzinger, Bernd Saletu, Gerhard Klösch
30 citations
Lucid dreaming therapy (LDT) did not improve sleep quality or reduce nightmare severity in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but it significantly decreased levels of anxiety and depression. About 80% of PTSD patients suffer from nightmares or dysphoric dreams. LDT teaches dreamers to become aware of and control dream content, offering a potential alternative or complementary treatment for PTSD-related anxiety and depression, even though it had no effect on sleep variables or the PTSD profile measured by the Impact of Events Scale.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2021
Brigitte Holzinger, Franziska Nierwetberg, Gerhard Klösch
2 citations
A woman with severe PTSD and recurrent nightmares completed six weeks of lucid dreaming training, which enabled her to alter her dream plots and improve several psychological measures. Her dream reports and assessment results are presented. The authors argue that sleep and nightmares should receive more attention in psychiatric treatment, not only for PTSD patients, and support their case with literature on non-medication treatments for sleep problems.
Somnologie - Schlafforschung und Schlafmedizin
August 15, 2023
Severin Ableidinger, Gerhard Klösch, Brigitte Holzinger
Dream research faces challenges due to limited, unstandardized, or labor-intensive questionnaires, leading to divergent results and poor comparability. The Dreamland Questionnaire, developed in 1997 and subsequently revised and partially validated, offers a short, easy-to-use tool covering dream quantities, qualities, and lucidity, and encourages dreamers to write down their dreams. It has been used to show that dreams collected in the laboratory differ from those at home, and that emotionality ratings differ between dreamers and external raters. The questionnaire is available in German.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Brigitte Holzinger, Lucille Mayer, Isabel Barros et al.
The Dreamland Questionnaire (DL-Q), a new instrument for analyzing dream content, was validated against the established Hall and van de Castle Coding System (HVDC). Twenty-two participants provided written dream reports and completed the DL-Q, yielding 30 dreams for comparison. Correlations between the two measures were high for dominant characters, pleasantness of dream content, and body-related experiences. Some DL-Q items showed low correlations, and others could not be directly compared because the HVDC lacked equivalent items. The DL-Q demonstrates satisfactory validity and reliability for assessing dream criteria and may serve as a useful tool for clinical and research purposes, though further validation is needed for certain items.