Further I might mention the case of a neurotic who suffered from a shaking tremor of the right arm with peculiar circular movements of the thumb and fore-finger. This tremor had been removed by pure suggestive methods, but one morning it returned, as the patient expressed it “by itself”. On closer questioning he remembered that the shaking had re-appeared in conjunction with a terrifying dream during the previous night; the actual content of the dream he had forgotten. During hypnosis the patient immediately became conscious again of the dream, and by means of it of those events which still compelled him to shake his arm. During the night he had dreamed of a Russian with a black beard who sprang on to his bed in order to strangle him. He awoke in anxiety and terror with his arm shaking. The patient had seen the face of this Russian appear over the parapet during a furious hand grenade fight just when he was on the point of fixing a grenade fuse and was suddenly blown over. He lost consciousness with his rage undischarged and an incipient movement which served as a mimic abreaction of this anger.
From this example, to which I could add many more, it becomes evident that dream material directly forces itself on the attention of the intelligent psycho-therapeutists as of great assistance in the treatment of war neuroses.
I do not treat any patients whose dreams I do not know. I have learnt for a long time now to estimate the dreams of my war neurotic patients as an attempt at self-healing, especially in the psycho-cathartic sense. I never give drugs for the dreams of anxiety, terror and rage. I am glad of the cooperation of the patient, I learn by listening to his dreams his own tendency to cure, then I get him to continue the dream under hypnosis where it has stopped the previous night, or, this I have several times found successful, I cause the patient to continue in his dreams at night from where the hypnosis has left off. Incidentally it may be remarked that after all these experiences I look upon hypnosis not as an artificial sleep but as a definite stage of natural sleep, which by virtue of its artificial induction enables one to maintain a direct rapport with the sleeper.