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It has long been known that terrifying dreams may be the precursors of grave mental disorders.1 Yet it would be wrong to conclude that in these instances the dreams themselves had traumatic effects, driving the subject into a psychosis. It is in line with psychoanalytic thinking rather to assume that, in this form of the seemingly traumatic dream, a latent disease made itself apparent during the night, causing dreams that were terrifying to the sleeper, who in his waking life had not yet been made aware of the disorder that was already germinating in him. After all, a comparable state of affairs has been observed in regard to physical disorders: symptoms of a physical disease that only later becomes manifest appear as elements in the manifest dream content, at a time when the subject feels himself to be in excellent physical health (see, for example, Sully, 1893).
Indeed, a psychoanalyst who is skilled in recognizing the import of such harbingers may—even if rarely—be able to save a patient's life, by suggesting a consultation with a specialist, the need for which has not yet made itself evident otherwise.
Moreover, if Freud's theory of dreams is accepted as valid, one must assume that no dream could ever itself constitute a trauma: events become traumatic only when the intensity of stimulation passes beyond a certain level; the anxiety signal would arouse the dreamer instantaneously when the total cathexis of dream elements came close to the traumatic level. It stands to reason that a subject's potential for the endurance of stimulation is limited, but in this respect the dreamer appears to be particularly well protected.
Clinical experience provides abundant confirmation of the fact