The Relationship Between Childhood Dreams
and Illness in Adults:
A Review of the Literature
By Alan James Strachan, Ph.D
This review
summarizes five studies in which a meaningful connection is made between a
childhood dream and an adult illness.
Saul and
Bernstein (1941) described the case of a woman patient, approximately 25 years
old, who suffered from chronic migraines and outbreaks of hives. They discovered that “Her deepest wish,
judging by her frequently recurring dream, which began in earliest childhood,
was for a good mother, actually for her concept of her own mother whom she had
lost at the age of 2” (pp. 353-354).
Saul and
Bernstein then made a connection between the childhood dream and the patient’s
chronic body symptoms.
Grown to womanhood, she retained
these intense longings of her childhood but was unable to satisfy them through
a normal sexual life, because of her fears. . . . When her perpetually frustrated longings were increased. . .
then she would become upset, frequently eat uncontrollably, be irritable,
develop migrainous headaches, and also weep, or else . . . break out with
hives. (p. 354)
Saul and
Bernstein described two therapy sessions in which the patient reported that she
had a recurrence of the childhood dream. In the first session she said that she awoke weeping; she then developed
a case of hives during the therapy session. In the second session the patient reported that she awoke
from the dream with a case of hives.
Lockhart
(1977) recounted a case in which a cancer patient reported the following dream
which had recurred since childhood:
I open the door of a darkened
bedroom, and with the light shining from my back across the room to a window, I
see a glowing face outside the window looking at me. I immediately become paralyzed, lift up off the ground so
that I am floating, and begin floating slowly toward the face. The dream never resolves beyond this
point. (p. 14)
Lockhart wrote
that “It was only when the dreamer completed the dream by exposing himself to
the awesome emotional power of the face that he experienced a release. . .
. The dream has not returned, nor
has his cancer” (p. 15).
Schneider
(1973) treated a man in his mid-40s who had experienced a heart attack. The man reported a nightmare which he
had dreamed recurrently since childhood:
I am running all night. I am running along the rooftops of the
city because I am being pursued. My pursuer changes shape. At first I am pursued by a woman, then she turns into a witch, then she
turns into a cat—and I keep running as though my life depended on it. . . (p. 367)
Schneider (1973) believed that the
dream was directly related to the heart attack, interpreting the “I am running”
image as “the heart pounding and running all night long, so that it can be said
that in his sleep the heart attack man does not consistently really totally
rest.” (p. 368)
Although
Schneider did not specifically mention another childhood dream, he did make the
general observation that “heart attack personalities” often have experienced
the shock of massive anxiety as early as 3 years of age, and that “Dreams
reflect each stage of alarm very precisely” (p. 366). He cited, for example, a separate case in which a man had a
symbolically significant dream hours before suffering a severe coronary. Schneider wrote that
The events and the dream bring into
sharp focus a repetitive obsessive-compulsive pattern fused with a running
stream of anger which had been characteristic of him since early childhood and
had now reached its inevitable self-destroying zenith. From the night-terrors of his childhood
to this horror-dream of his sick adulthood—he had moved to this shocking
climax. (p. 364)
Lippman (1954)
discovered three kinds of dreams associated with migraines. He classified these
dreams as the nightmare, the nostalgic technicolor dream, and the waking dream.
Each of the dream types had five characteristics in common: recurrence,
brilliant colors, appearance at specific times in the life-span, certain
emotional tones which usually carried over into the waking state, and, in some
cases, persistence as a visual hallucination after the patient was wide awake.
If a patient described dreams which could be classified as one of the three
types, then Lippman used the dreams as a diagnostic aid and advised treatment
for migraine.
Lippman described “The Nightmare” as
follows:
Dream Pattern #1: The Nightmare. These dreams begin in early childhood,
recurring frequently until the 10th or 12th year. Some patients remark that their dream “began as far back as
they can remember.” In rare cases
the dream may recur infrequently in adult life, usually during or following
periods of illness. In such
instances, it is remarkable that the dream is identical in detail with that of
the early childhood years. (p. 273)
Lippman went
on to say that the nightmare is characterized by intense terror and panic which
his patients typically described as being completely out of proportion to the
dream situation. This feeling
continues into the waking state, sometimes lasting for hours. Lippman provided case material on five
patients, each of whom suffered from migraines, and each of whom experienced
the recurrent nightmare dreams in childhood.
Mindell cited
one case (1985) in which a physical symptom was related to a childhood
dream. The patient was a
40-year-old man with a recurring backache. As a child, the man had a dream in which he had tripped over
his mother’s feet, whereupon his mother had turned into a cow. The cow head grew ever larger until it
filled his vision, with its mouth open in a silent scream. As they worked on the dream, the man
said that the cow had a lot of pain that he could feel in his stomach. Mindell amplified the pain by applying
pressure until, still with the man’s encouragement, he was using a great deal
of force. The man gave no
indication of being in pain, and eventually they realized that he was
exhibiting a cow-like nature. Both
the dream and the backache were telling the man that he needed to express his
pain.
It is
interesting to note that although Jung (1938-39) did not cite a specific
childhood dream and its relationship to a physical problem experienced by an
adult, he did make the general observation that such dreams can, in later life,
affect an individual’s posture, movements, and ability to feel his or her body.
To summarize,
these articles described a connection between childhood dreams and a variety of
physical symptoms that manifested in adulthood. The symptoms were migraines (Lippman, 1954; Saul & Bernstein,
1941), cancer (Lockhart, 1977), heart attack (Schneider, 1973), hives (Saul
& Bernstein, 1941), and backache (Mindell, 1985). Migraines were the only symptom that appeared in more than
one case.
Although the
symptoms varied considerably, the cases have a number of elements in
common. Lockhart, Schneider,
Lippman, and Saul and Bernstein all noted that the dreams were recurrent. In all five articles, the dreams were
characterized by extremely strong affect. In two instances the authors emphasized the antiquity of the dreams,
noting that they began “in earliest childhood” (Saul & Bernstein, 1941, p.
353) and “as far back as they can remember” (Lippman, 1954, p. 273). Finally, in each case, the dream was in
some way incomplete. For example,
Saul and Bernstein’s patient was left with intense, unresolved longings;
Lockhart’s patient floated toward but never reached the large face; Schneider’s
patient was endlessly pursued; Lippman’s patients recounted a variety of
unresolved terrors; and Mindell’s patient dreamt of a cow whose mouth was open
as if to scream. Both Lockhart and
Mindell worked with their patients to help them complete the dreams. In Lockhart’s case, the patient went
into remission, while Mindell did not describe the effect of the work on his
patient’s physical symptom.
These articles
support the theory that there can be a meaningful connection between childhood
dreams and the subsequent development of illness in adulthood, and identify the
key elements of such dreams: recurrence, strong affect, antiquity and
incompleteness.
References
Jung, C.G.
(1938-1939). Psychological Interpretation of Children's Dreams, Zurich
lectures, (unpublished).
Lippman, Caro
W. (1954). Recurrent Dreams in Migraine: An Aid to Diagnosis. J. of Nervous
and Mental Disease, 120, 273-276.
Lockhart,
Russell A. (1977). Cancer in Myth
and Dream: An Exploration into the Archetypal Relation Between Dreams and
Disease. Spring, NY: Spring
Publications.
Mindell,
Arnold. (1985). Working With the Dreaming Body. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Saul, Leon J.,
and Bernstein, Clarence Jr. (1941). The Emotional Settings of Some Attacks of
Urticaria. Psychosomatic Medicine, 3/4, 349-369.
Schneider,
Daniel E. (1973). Conversion of Massive Anxiety into Heart Attack. American
J. of Psychotherapy, 27, 360-378.
(Originally published in Dream
Network, 1995, 14/1-2, 26-27.)