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This paper is based on the dream content of two patients. In contrast to other color dreams reported in the literature, the same color of each patient appeared again and again. Blue dominated the otherwise colorless dreams of patient A, while red ran through the dreams of patient B like the proverbial thread.
The appearance of color in dreams is a well-known phenomenon. Surprisingly little has been reported about this is the psychoanalytic literature; furthermore, a survey of published paper shows that a great deal of speculation and divergence exists as to the meaning of color in dreams.
Even Freud3 had little to say about the use of color in dreams. In his interpretation of dreams he was primarily concerned with content. He felt that sensory perceptions of color revived memory images of color, and were thus represented in the dream. Since he treated color as he would any other dream element, it is possible that other investigators, following his lead, discussed color elements in dreams in a general way without attempting to ferret out specific meanings. It is only comparatively recently that color in dreams has received more attention.
Schilder7 reported the dreams of three patients in which the colors blue and yellow appeared. Based on the dream content, Schilder associated the appearances of these colors in dreams with horror, fright and despair and came to the conclusion that the “associative mechanism is superimposed on a psychological mechanism. Emotions change the perception of colors.”