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Dreams have always miraculously mystified reality, introducing fantasy notes into it. Despite the fact that the 21st century is in the yard, science and logic have long explained many previously inexplicable things, it is dreams that remain the thread that connects a modern person and his inner, unknown and half of the “I”.
What if this innermost self is different from the accepted norm? What then images and visions arise in a person’s head? Scientists have proven that each of the pathologies has its own set of specific dreams. And these dreams are not at all random, but are directly related to the diagnosis. We invite you to plunge into the world of nightmares of those diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness. The study confirmed: the longer a person is sick with this disorder, the richer his dreams. Colors become brighter, and the experience of emotions is stronger.
Erased edge
Repeatedly in quite serious studies of well-known psychiatrists and psychotherapists, it was said that dreams are nothing more than a direct reflection of everyday realities, a kind of response to stress. Consciousness suppressed in a state of sleep gives way to the subconscious, releasing fears and fears, conjectures and assumptions, exposing the logic of what is happening and even programming reality to some extent. This is what, according to experts, is the reason for the appearance of «prophetic» dreams.
Many pseudo-scientific articles mention that colorful, vivid and dynamic dreams are a sure sign of schizotypal disorder. However, this statement is only partly true. The saturation of our dreams and their realism is directly related to the peculiarities of the emotional perception of reality. For more impressionable natures, a stormy living of everyday events is characteristic. And the more aggressive and brighter the impression, the clearer and more realistic its imprint in a dream.
What kind of dreams do schizophrenics have?
Thanks to many years of observation of patients and the possibility of hardware research of brain waves during sleep, scientists were able to quite accurately restore the most common «pictures» that people with schizophrenia observe at night, these are:
- frightening its illogicality and absurdity images that can be completely not connected in any way;
- scenes cruelty and violence unfolding in strange circumstances and scenery;
- identification in a dream of self with a child, dead body, or animals or zoomorph;
- illogicality in the sequence of some familiar and mundane actions, falling from below up, back and forth movement;
- retrospective with elements of emotional experience fragments of the past;
- Transfer consciousness into non-existent worlds, as well as «visiting» hell or heaven.
And a little more strange about dreams in schizophrenia …
Many doctors, discussing their dreams with patients, have come to the conclusion that schizophrenics often have cyclic dreams within one sleep cycle. This feature is typical for those who are in the acute phase of the disease.
High color rendering and detailing of dreams in patients with schizophrenic disorder occurs 20 times more often than in healthy people. So this feature can be called characteristic of schizophrenics.
And of course, the realism of everything that happens in a dream. All dreams are so real that even after waking up, patients cannot come to their senses and realize where the nightmare ends and the ordinary order of things begins. By the way, such a state was first described in literature in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. The scene of Ivan Karamazov’s conversation with the devil and his confusion afterwards in an attempt to understand whether it was nonsense or reality is described so realistically and accurately that some researchers seriously suggest that Fyodor Mikhailovich has schizophrenic manifestations.