Dreams and Bipolar Disorder
Marco Zanasi, MD, is a
medical doctor, neurologist, psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. He
is Research Professor at the Psychiatric Clinic of Tor Vergata
University, Rome. For many years he has been studying oneiric
activity in normal and pathological minds. He has organized
congresses on Analytical Psychology, Group Analysis and
Neurophysiology.
Manlio Caporali, MD,
specialized in Neurology and Psychiatry, and was Assistant
Professor at La Sapienza University, Rome, Department of
Neurology. Since 1988 he has been an Assistant Professor at Tor
Vergata Univerity, Rome. The author of 145 scientific papers and
two books, he now works in the fields of Group and Dream Textual
Analysis.
Barbara Centini, MD, is a trainee in Psychiatry.
Alberto Siracusano, MD, is
a psychiatrist and Full Professor of Psychiatry at Tor Vergata
University, Rome.
Abstract
This work aims to prove that
textual analysis techniques can be used in studying oneiric
material. These techniques have been applied to bipolar subjects’
dreams. Moving from the Jungian idea of the dream as symbolic
matter, authors came to think of the dream as a form of text, and
analysable as such. Beside validating this analytical criterion,
this work is aimed to research significant aspects that could be
used together with other diagnostic criteria. To achieve these
goals, a group of bipolar inpatients have been selected
accordingly to DSM IV TR. Their dream reports have been analyzed
in and compared with those of a control group. The analysis takes
into account such aspects as the sequence of the report, the
emotional features, the persona system, number of words used, the
presence of lemmata belonging to certain semantic fields.
Preliminary findings show specific modifications of the above
features that are still under evaluation.
