Depression and dreams Dream Meanings

One hundred and forty dreams were collected from a group of patients suffering depression.

The same number of dreams were collected from people simi­lar in age and social background, but not suffering depression.

The dreams were given code numbers, mixed and given to an independent judge. He was asked to look for any evident themes of self punishment, such as ‘I was waiting for my friends all night but they never turned up’, ‘my fiance married somebody else’. Such self punishing themes were found to occur with greater frequency in the depressives’ dreams.