The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 27, 2, 1958: H. Robert Blank. 'Dreams of the Blind.'

The congenitally blind and, with few exceptions, those blinded before the age of 5, do not have visual dreams, the predominant sensory modality being hearing. Those blinded later than the age of 7 tend to retain visual memory and visual dream imagery. The phenomenological differences between the dreams of the blind and the seeing are not fundamental. They require no revision of the psychoanalytic theory of dreams. The typical dream of the blind is one that is determined primarily by serious reality problems and it usually contains some prominent spoken statement, or other superego elements more closely related to the day's residue than to deeply repressed conflicts. The reason is that the ambivalence and reactive guilt due to dependence on seeing guides, and others, produces a formidable knot of unresolved day-residues. Five dreams of the blind are presented chiefly to illustrate their variety and the relationship of the dream to the psychic problems of the blind dreamer, especially the problems concerning his blindness. The outstanding contributions in the literature on dreams of the blind are reviewed. (Based on Author's Summary.)