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.
I Would Like to Begin Not with a Detailed Look at the Papers By Dr. Sand and by Drs. Greenberg and Pearlman, or even with Freud's interpretation of dreams, but rather with some striking images I have repeatedly found in long series of dreams collected from persons who have gone through a traumatic or disturbing event. I am not talking about the clinical condition posttraumatic stress disorder but rather about the more common situation in which someone has just escaped from a fire, has been raped or attacked, or has experienced the unexpected death of a loved one and is gradually coming to terms with the event. What I find in these dreams is what I call the “tidal wave” dream. No matter what sort of trauma the person has experienced, the dreams during the following weeks often contain something like this: “I was walking along the beach, when suddenly a huge tidal wave came up and engulfed me. I was thrown around, terrified, not sure whether I would make it to the surface when I woke up.”
The subject is not always specifically a tidal wave, of course, but I call these dreams tidal wave dreams after one of the most prominent images. Other images that come up frequently include “A huge train was rushing right at me … I couldn't get out of the way. I woke up terrified” and “I was being chased by a gang of thugs or Nazis, and I couldn't get away.”