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My brief comments on C. Brooks Brenneis's (1994) engaging article (“Can Early Childhood Trauma Be Reconstructed From Dreams? On the Relation of Dreams to Trauma”), which appeared previously in this journal, fall into three broad groupings: (a) the relation between dream content and trauma; (b) analytic reconstruction and dreams; and (c) experimental psychology, clinical observation, and psychoanalysis.
Consistently over time, there have been reports by insightful and conscientious clinicians that dreams can replicate traumatic experience (Bonaparte, 1947; Renik, 1981; Terr, 1979, 1990; van der Kolk, Briz, Burr, Sherry, & Hartmann, 1984). It is unfortunate that Brenneis (1994) discredited this data. In presenting evidence to make the point that the impact of stimulation on ensuing dreams is never identical to the stimulation,