Dream Content in Complicated Grief: A Window into Loss-Related Cognitive Schemas

Abstract

Bereavement and its accompanying psychological response (grief) constitute potent experiences that necessitate the reorganization of cognitive-affective representations of lost significant attachment figures during both wakefulness and dreaming. The goals of this preliminary study were to explore whether the dream content of 77 adults with complicated grief (CG) differed from that of a normative sample and whether CG patients who dream of the deceased differ from CG patients who do not dream of the deceased on measures of daytime emotional distress. CG dreams were characterized by more family and familiar characters including the deceased (in women), and fewer social interactions and emotions compared to norms. Increased representations of familiar characters in CG dreams may reflect attempts to reorganize relational cognitive schemas to compensate for the loss.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by NIH grants MH60783, MH24652, MH30915, AG 020677, AG13396, MH71944, MH37869, the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Notes

Note. H/V = Hall and Van de Castle dream content scoring system; CG = complicated grief; h = h effect size statistics.

*p < .05. **p < .01.