You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As the title indicates, this paper deals with an old and still controversial issue: namely, the overlap between the dream and psychosis. Brenneis reviews a number of earlier studies, all of them reaching the general conclusion that there
are no unique or uniform differences between the dreams of schizophrenics and those of nonschizophrenics. Primitive content and blatant defensive failures, for example, while assumed to be characteristic of the ego deficit in schizophrenia, are by no means uniquely reflected in the dreams of schizophrenics. Brenneis's own study attempts a more specific and sophisticated approach. Content is examined not in terms of bizarreness or primitiveness, but rather in terms of the fluidity of concept formation, the insubstantiality of self-nonself differentiation, and, conversely, the exaggerated definition of boundaries as polarities. In these areas the data suggest a continuity in the thinking of schizophrenics during wakefulness and sleep. Most notable was 'fabulized combinatory', 'confabulatory', and 'contaminatory' dream material. Formal properties and issues of perceptual organization were found more useful in the task of differentiating dreams than content and issues of personal or symbolic meaning.