Many successful artists use their
nightmares in their work. This series of case reports (N=14) is a series of
in-depth interviews with such artists, including an assessment of nightmare use
in their work, any experience of trauma that may have contributed to their
nightmares, and an assessment as to any past and current symptoms of PTSD.
While some of these artists were best classified diagnostically as having
Nightmare Disorder, a majority (11/14) of these successful artists had
histories of significant trauma, and met DSM-V diagnostic criteria for PTSD.
There is some evidence that these individuals did their best creative work
after their experiences of trauma. These findings suggest that for the artist,
nightmare expression rather than suppression (the objective of most PTSD
therapies) might be a reasonable therapeutic option.
Artists ranging
from Goya, to Fusili and Picasso have used their nightmares in their work. In
our Sundance filmmaker work with dream use in creativity, we discovered
significantly elevated levels of dream and nightmare recall and use when
compared to clinical sleep and medical practice groupings, and the working/professional
film making groups. Sleep lab subjects reporting levels of creative interest
and/or creative process were also found to report a higher incidence of
nightmares than those reporting no creative interests. These studies suggested
the possibility that the report of nightmares might be a signifier or a marker
for interest and involvement in the process of creativity. In a study of
non-dreamers (a sleep laboratory grouping (N = 17) reporting no dream or
nightmare recall by history or after multiple lab awakenings) the one
documentable behavioral difference between this group and a grouping with
minimal dream recall was a lack of interest and involvement in creative process.
This current study includes a series of fourteen in-depth interviews with
successful visual artists who do creative work based at least in part on their
nightmares. The interviews were minimally directed in order to obtain
information as to recurrent nightmare content, any description of associated
trauma, and any reported use of nightmares in their work. Due to the small
group size, this is primarily a descriptive study designed to obtain answers to
the following for this sample: 1) age, gender, and trauma exposure; 2)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptom incidence; 3) characteristic
nightmare content; and 4) incidence for the successful use of nightmares in
artistic production.
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