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The object of this communication is to discuss a dream which occurred during a migraine attack in a psychoneurotic. The psychosomatic correlations adduced will be considered in the light of certain ideas advanced in previous clinical and theoretical studies (1), (3).
The patient was a twenty-five year old professional student who had been having migraine attacks since the age of twelve. They occurred about once weekly, were hemicranial, and were accompanied by nausea, photophobia and an accentuation of the pain on shaking of the head. He came for treatment of an obsessional neurosis, some of the symptoms of which were obsessive fantasies of hostility to his parents and to others. With analysis there was improvement in the neurosis, and at the point of this writing the migraine attacks were occurring about once a month.
The patient had started a course of instruction in a certain subject. The instructor, on learning his name, inquired whether he was related to another individual with a similar surname. He replied they were brothers. During the course of the afternoon he was asked several questions the answers to which were breezily ridiculed by the instructor. After returning home he checked his answers and found that he was correct and his instructor incorrect. Although the questions involved only minor matters and although he knew the instructor had behaved naturally in his usual manner, with great confidence and without malice, nevertheless he felt extremely hostile to him. Several days later he was again in session with the same instructor. This session was long and drawn out. During the latter part he developed a migraine headache which lasted the rest of the night. He made several bonehead remarks during the conference.
That night he had the following dream. In it he was entrusted with a collection of phonograph records by a sergeant. It included a lovely Haydn Symphony which he stole. Later in the dream he was walking at night around the Psychology Building at th