Nightmare Therapy: Emerging Concepts From Sleep Medicine
May 1, 2015 DOI: 10.4324/9781315761640-18 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key points | Argues that sleep medicine and psychiatry hold divergent models of chronic nightmare disorder: sleep medicine treats nightmares as an independent disorder warranting direct intervention, while psychiatry has long viewed them as secondary to a primary disorder and treats the underlying condition instead, with some arguing that focusing on nightmares could undermine psychodynamic processes. |
Abstract
Sleep medicine specialists view the problem of chronic nightmare disorder as an independent sleep disorder. When patients seek treatment for chronic nightmares, a direct intervention may be offered regardless of the putative causes. This approach derives from the assumption that nightmares may persist because they “take on a life of their own” (Krakow & Zadra, 2006a) despite the fact that nightmares are generally triggered by clear-cut life stressors such as traumatic exposure or a protracted course of psychiatric illness. In contrast, sleep medicine does not view nightmares exclusively as a symptomatic feature of a primary disorder, whereas the psychiatric community and its nosology have long maintained that nightmares are best understood as a secondary phenomenon for which treatment need only be directed at the inciting disorder (Brewin, Lanius, Novac, Schnyder, & Galea, 2009). In this standard model, the nightmares may provide additional value in so far as working with bad dreams uncovers critical emotional confl icts and meaningful insights to help treat the primary disorder, but the nightmares themselves do not —and some would say should not —receive primary attention for fear that essential psychodynamic processes may be masked, undermined, or lost (Parker-Pope, 2010).
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |