Nightmares a sign of personality disorders?

Press, 10 January 1987, Page 10

Nightmares a sign of personality disorders?

NZPA-AP Chicago Lifelong nightmare sufferers are creative but vulnerable people who may be schizophrenic, paranoid, or suffer from other personality disorders, according to a researcher. "Overall, the term that seems to sum up their characteristics best is thin boundaries,” said Dr Ernest Hartmann, chief

author of a study in “archives of General Psychiatry,” published by the American Medical Association. “They are thin-skinned. They are even thin in terms of wake-sleep patterns, meaning they may not experience deep sleep,” Dr Hartmann said in an interview. Dr Hartmann led five researchers from the sleep research laboratory

at Boston’s Lemuel Shatttuck Hospital and nearby Cambridge Hospital in testing a group of. 36 people, aged 20 to 35. Twelve of the 36 reported having at least one long frightening dream a week since before age five. Another 12 had no nightmares but did report vivid dreams, and the other 12 reported having neither nightmares nor dreams. Each group had the same number of women and men. The most common nightmare was that of being chased by a frightening figure or group of people, the study said. Five of the 12 nightmare subjects reported they were sometimes stabbed, beaten or shot. With a couple of exceptions, it was the sleepers themselves who were in danger, Dr Hartmann said. Among the 12 nightmare sufferers, the researchers diagnosed two as having schizophrenia, a severe mental disorder whose sufferers have a distorted view of reality and experience delusions. Three of the 12 nightmare sufferers had schizotypal personality disorders’ and another had borderline personality disorders. The remaining six reported occasional paranoid feelings and other personality problems. More of the nightmare sufferers were unemployed than in the other two groups, and those who were employed had occupations related to the arts, the study found. Eight described themselves as musicians, painters, poets or craftspersons, though they did not support themselves totally by those occupations, the article said.

They (nightmare sufferers) became over-in-volved in with difficult, painful separations, Dr Hartmann said. . , . The one theme that oc-’ curred in the entire group was that the nightmare sufferers saw themselves as different from other children in some way, the study said. The words most commonly used were more sensitive, more artistic, or more easily hurt. “More strikingly, they have a certain openness, sensitivity, and vulnerability which we might consider a problem in ego structure formation or an unusual ego structure,” Dr Hartmann said. “Openness, sensitivity and vulnerability can be both good ,and bad,” he said. “Those things are useful if. you’re creative, blit they can also be problems.” “Tests ~, indicate that nightmare sufferers are not dangerously psychotic, and are not people with powerful' hostilities or people wi,th an unusual number of fears,” j Dr Hartmann said. The study said longtime nightmare *. sufferers , represented probably less than 1 per-cent of the population. ,