Frequency and Nature of Pain in a Long Dream Series

T old saying “If you pinch yourself and experience pain you cannot dream” implicate that dreams might be void of pain sensations. Symons (1) wrote that having pain dreams is maladaptive because acute pain should be result in awakening (it might be a potentially dangerous situation). Although there had been examples of pain dreams published (2-3), the first content analytic study of 119 REM awakening dreams obtained from 20 male healthy students yielded only one reference to pain and even this reference was not explicit like “I am experiencing pain.” (4). The most extensive study on the topic was carried out by Zadra and coworkers (5). About 50% of the 185 participants completing a dream questionnaire stated that they had at least one pain dream in their life time. Analyzing 3045 home dreams, the prevalence of pain dreams was 0.59% (5). Interestingly, most of the pain situations in the dream (being stabbed, being shot, being electrocuted, and accidents) does not refer to an actual or past waking-life pain experience of the dreamer; only one participants who suffered from occasional lower back pain in waking life reported also dreams in which his back was hurting. A case report (6) and field-observations (7) also indicate that waking-life pain experiences might be related to the occurrence in the dream, for example, toothache dreams in children (7). As pain is not very prominent in the waking life of healthy persons, the small amount of pain dreams might still in line with the continuity hypothesis of dreaming (8). Thus, if dreams reflect the waking life, pain patients should have more pain dreams than healthy persons. Up to now, only one study (9) looked into the frequency of pain dreams in patients experiencing severe pain – in this case – due to burn injuries; 30.2% of their dreams included pain experiences measured by selfrating scales presented to the patient after Frequency and Nature of Pain in a Long Dream Series