Some characteristics of the manifest dream content of mental defectives

Dreaming in the Depressed

“…Boss (22), in a study of the dreams of organic psychotics, does notice a reduction of dream reports with progressing illness which he felt was not a failure to report or recall dreams but was due to a reduction in dream activity. However, in studies of the mentally defective, who might be thought of as more concrete and less psychologically minded or introspective, recall of dreams was found to be decreased by one observer (30) and not to be different from that found in normals by another (71). Barad (2,9), who studied the dreams of the aged with chronic brain syndromes, comments on the increased stereotypy with increasing impairment; but makes no observation about change in frequency of reporting dreams with increased severity of the organic process.…”