Lutz Wittmann

• International Psychoanalytic University Berlin

The Big Five personality factors (PF) are considered to be predictive of mental health problems, but it is unclear if these factors equally contributed to mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to before the pandemic. This prospective study aimed to fill this knowledge gap. For this purpose data was extracted from the populati...

Introduction: The role of neuroticism in the relationship between nightmare characteristics (e.g., frequency and replicativity), and nightmare-related suffering, i.e., nightmare-related distress and impairment after awaking, is still to be explored. Methods: In a sample of 346 soldiers (mean age 33.95 years, 13.9% females) who experienced at least...

Background Patients with somatoform pain experience physical pain that cannot be attributed to any underlying medical or physiological cause, and it is often thought to be related to psychological factors. Health professionals encounter difficulties identifying this specific type of chronic pain, leading to suboptimal treatment strategies. Therefor...

Aim The extent to which recent potentially traumatic events (PTEs) hinder the recovery from pre-existing mental health problems is largely unknown. The same applies to the extent to which non-recovery from pre-existing mental health problems increases the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The aim of the present study is to gain insight...

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Der vorliegende Beitrag soll das Verständnis von Freuds Traumtheorie erleichtern. Die vorgestellte neue Perspektive basiert auf dem fünften Kapitel von Freuds »Abriß der Psychoanalyse « (1940a). Dieses Kapitel enthält eine kompakte Zusammenfassung von Freuds Traumtheorie unter Anwendung des strukturellen Gesichtspunktes. Die Autor...

Background: Clinical case illustrations of patients with an impairment of personality functioning (IPF) have repeatedly reported that progress during psychotherapy is reflected by alterations in dream content. However, quantitative studies based on samples of psychotherapy patients are scarce. As a core component of both personality functioning and...

The association between psychopathology and dreaming has been investigated for various mental disorders. As for dream reports of patients with severe impairments in personality functioning (IPF), however, with a few exceptions, these contributions are mostly based on conceptual considerations or clinical case studies. As a core component of both pe...

This article aimed to provide a systematic narrative synthesis of existing studies on the mediators of change in psychotherapy with adolescents (10–19 years) and transition age youth (TAY) (20–29 years) who have experienced trauma-related symptoms or posttraumatic disorder. Additionally, we were interested in identifying psychotherapy-, trauma type...

Background For empirical dream research, numerous scales and rating systems exist for different facets of dreaming. Objective The present study aimed to compare two different approaches for dream report analysis focusing on content and affect regulation, respectively. Materials and methods The Hall and Van de Castle Coding System (HVCCS), complem...

Gender is one of the well-recognized risk factors for idiopathic nightmares, but rarely connected to posttraumatic nightmare characteristics. Thus, this study aims to test gender differences in (posttraumatic) nightmare characteristics after controlling for trauma-related psychopathology in a large sample of people who experienced trauma. Research...

Background Findings from prospective studies question the assumption that mental health problems observed in traumatized adults mainly reflect the effects of potentially traumatic events. Aims Aim of the present comparative prospective study is to clarify the extent to which victims of potentially traumatic events with mental health, social, finan...

To contribute to the characterization of nightmares in trauma survivors, the Zurich Dream Process Coding System was used to analyze reports of recurrent nightmares from 27 German soldiers with a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress or adjustment disorder who had been admitted to a trauma-related treatment program. Applying a previously developed set o...

Introduction: The aim of the present study was (1) to validate the method of guilt-induction by means of a written auto-biographical essay and (2) to test whether experimental pain is apt to alleviate the mental burden of guilt, a concept receiving support from both empirical research and clinical observation. Methods: Three independent groups of h...

INTRODUCTION: The aim of the present study was (1) to validate the method of guilt-induction by means of a written auto-biographical essay and (2) to test whether experimental pain is apt to alleviate the mental burden of guilt, a concept receiving support from both empirical research and clinical observation. METHODS: Three independent groups of h...

Psychological theories have been developed to explain why certain trauma survivors go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder and others do not. These theories try to capture what happens at the level of the trauma survivor’s personal experiences, in terms of thoughts, memory, emotions, behaviours, and underlying processes of which the person i...

With the integrative psychodynamic-cognitive psychotherapy of Mardi J. Horowitz and the psychodynamic-imaginative trauma therapy of Luise Reddemann, this chapter presents two influential approaches within psychodynamic-trauma-focused psychotherapy. These are complemented by reporting on a more recent development, the manual psychodynamic trauma the...

Background Victims of violence, accidents and threats are at risk for mental health problems. Lower coping self-efficacy and social support levels increase this risk. Although highly relevant, it is unknown if the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic amplifies these risks. Aims To examine if the prevalence, incidence and/or mean scores for...

»Now Moments« in Therapeutic Dialogue: An Insight into the Practice of Scenic-Narrative Microanalysis (SNMA). – The paper presents an example of scrutinizing a psychotherapy session by means of »Scenic Narrative Microanalysis« (SNMA). Trained raters identified independently »Now Moments« and »Moments of Meeting« as defined by Daniel Stern and the B...

Background The availability of psychometrically sound instruments for the assessment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is indispensable for clinical and scientific work with individuals suffering from trauma-related distress. Objective The aim of the present study was to translate the Post-Traumatic Diagnostic Scale for DSM-5 (PDS-5) into G...

Our previous paper aimed at facilitating the understanding and handling of Freud’s dream theory. Critical comments prompt us to differentiate more explicitly between verbal and perceptual representations of the latent dream thought, i.e. between: 1. the unconscious formation of the preconscious and verbal latent dream thought; 2. the transformatio...

Background Adverse childhood experiences, especially maltreatment, are regarded as significant risk factors for the development of antisocial behavior in adolescence. However, possible correlates are still to be investigated after considering the history of criminal records and the experience of institutionalization. Objective In this study, diffe...

Prediction of treatment response to trauma-focused psychotherapy remains a difficult task. This study evaluated treatment response to Brief Eclectic Psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder dependent on pre-treatment variables, symptom progression, and manual adherence. We tested differences in pre-treatment variables and symptom time course...

Mit der integrativen psychodynamisch-kognitiven Psychotherapie von Mardi J. Horowitz und der psychodynamisch-imaginativen Traumatherapie von Luise Reddemann stellt dieses Kapitel zwei einflussreiche Ansätze innerhalb der psychodynamisch-traumafokussierten Psychotherapie vor. Mit dem Manual psychodynamische Traumatherapie von Wittmann, Ferrajao und...

This article aims at facilitating the understanding of Freud´s dream theory for psychoanalytic as well as non-psychoanalytic clinicians and scientists. The new perspective is based on a section of An Outline of Psychoanalysis (Freud, 1938) which, to date, does not appear to have been considered adequately. This section comprises a dense summary of...

Background: Nightmares are a widespread phenomenon. In comparison to the general population, they occur in mentally ill and especially in traumatized individuals with an increased frequency. Despite the high prevalence, there is no short questionnaire in the German language that is able to characterize nightmares, to differentiate between different...

This consensus paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research on the aetiology and treatment of nightmare disorder and outlines further perspectives on these issues. It presents a definition of nightmares and nightmare disorder followed by epidemiological findings, and then explains existing models of nightmare aetiology in traumati...

Several lines of research suggest that stress contributes to the emergence of chronic pain. Moreover, a number of pathways imply a tight neuronal link between the nociceptive system and the HPA axis. However, data on the interplay of cortisol and chronic pain are sparse, and experimental studies focusing on the release of cortisol in response to ac...

Trauma is one of the most important topics discussed throughout the clinical, social and cultural field. Social traumatization, as we meet it in the aftermath of genocide, war and persecution, is targeted at whole groups and thus affects the individual's immediate holding environment, cutting it off from an important resilience factor; further on,...

Objective: Nightmares are among the most frequent and disturbing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, basic research questions regarding key associations between certain nightmare characteristics, especially replicativeness, and posttraumatic psychopathology need further empirical elaboration. Method: Sixty-two German soldi...

Die vorliegende Arbeit will zwei bezüglich Zielsetzung und Methodik unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen zum Thema Traum miteinander vergleichen. Nach einer Vorstellung von zugrundeliegenden Annahmen und technischem Vorgehen wird derselbe Traumbericht einer Patientin unabhängig voneinander von einem Traumseminar nach Morgenthaler sowie dem Zurich Dre...

Objective: Acute myocardial infarction (MI) is a life-threatening condition, leading to immediate fear and distress in many patients. Approximately 18% of patients develop posttraumatic stress disorder in the aftermath of MI. Trait resilience has shown to be a protective factor for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. However, whether...

There is growing evidence that fear-learning abnormalities are involved in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain. More than 50% of PTSD patients suffer from chronic pain. This study aimed to examine the role of fear-learning deficits in the link between pain perception and PTSD. We included 19 subjects with PTSD a...

Purpose: This study aimed to describe, compare, and predict mental health outcomes of different migrant groups and native residents in Switzerland. Subjects and methods: Asylum seekers (n = 65); refugees holding permanent protection visas (n = 34); illegal migrants (n = 21); labor migrants (n = 26); and residents (n = 56) completed an assessment by...

Background With increasing numbers of previous traumatic experiences, a rising risk of psychiatric morbidity and in particular post-traumatic stress disorder following an acute trauma has been reported. This dose-effect relationship was called the building block effect. Most results are derived from studies on riot and prosecution victims. We inves...

Moser and von Zeppelin developed a dream generation model. Based on an empirical scientific method for dream coding derived from this model, affect regulation processes within dreams can be reconstructed. A dream of a Canadian soldier is used to illustrate this approach and to examine its possibilities as well as limitations. Finally, this article...

Psychological theories have been developed to explain why certain trauma survivors go on to develop posttraumatic stress disorder and others do not. These theories try to capture what happens at the level of the trauma survivor’s personal experiences, in terms of thoughts, memory, emotions, behaviours, and underlying processes of which the person i...

Numerous studies have identified risk factors for acute and long-term posttraumatic stress symptoms following traumatic exposure. However, little is known about whether there are common pathways to the development of acute stress disorder (ASD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Research suggests that a common path to ASD and PTSD may lie in...

Purpose: Distress caused by cancer may have an important impact on the quality of a couple's relationship. This investigation examined perceived relationship changes in a sample of cancer patients and their partners, accounting for gender and role (i.e., patient or partner). Patients and methods: A total of 209 patients with different cancer typ...

Background: This study evaluated a German translation of the State Scale of Dissociation (SSD), a self-report measure of state dissociation. Methods: Consecutively treated out- and day-care patients with (n = 27) and without a dissociative disorder (n = 90) were assessed with the SSD and the Multidimensional Inventory for Dissociation. Results: The...

It is largely unknown how quality of life (QoL) changes following accidental injuries. Equally, the mechanisms underlying such changes have not yet been identified in detail. This study of injured accident survivors aimed to: (1) detect a model of change which best explains the observed course of QoL, and (2) identify potential predictor variables....

At present post-disaster activities and plans seem to vary widely. An adequate estimation of the availability of post-disaster psychosocial services across Europe is needed in order to compare them with recently developed evidence-informed psychosocial care guidelines. Here we report on the results of a cross-sectional web-based survey completed in...

Sleep onset and maintenance problems are a frequent complaint after traumatic events in children. However, the association of traumatic experiences and disturbed sleep remains to be explained. To examine the incidence of sleep onset and maintenance problems in children after road traffic accidents and identify potential predictors of sleep onset an...

This pilot study tested the validity of a 1-item visual assessment method originally developed to evaluate suffering in chronic illness that has been adapted for use with patients who have been exposed to traumatic events. The Pictorial Representation of Illness and Self Measure (PRISM) was administered 5 times during the course of a posttraumatic...

To the Editor: Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing are empirically supported treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).1 However, dropout rates from CBT studies are usually around 20%; up to 58% of patients who completed CBT are still diagnosed with PTSD at posttreatment asse...

Brief eclectic psychotherapy for PTSD (BEPP) is an evidence-based therapeutic approach that combines and integrates elements from psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, and directive psychotherapy. Psychoeducation is done jointly with the patient and his or her partner. Exposure, a structured writing task, and memorabilia are used to help patients ac...

Posttraumatic nightmares are considered as a reexperiencing symptom of the DSM-IV posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. Different types of posttraumatic nightmares, however, may differ in their relation to psychopathology. Thirty-two children were longitudinally assessed 10 days, 2 months, and 6 months after traffic accidents. Occurrence...

This quantitative-qualitative case study focuses on processes of personal transformation in chronic physical disease in order to further our understanding of the posttraumatic growth construct. Semistructured interviews were conducted with women suffering from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. The validity of the posttraumatic growth construct is asses...

How best to plan and provide psychosocial care following disasters remains keenly debated. To develop evidence-informed post-disaster psychosocial management guidelines. A three-round web-based Delphi process was conducted. One hundred and six experts rated the importance of statements generated from existing evidence using a one to nine scale. Par...

The relationship between acute stress disorder (ASD), posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD), and chronic pain was investigated in a longitudinal study of injured accident victims (N = 323, 64.7% men). Assessments took place 5 days (T1), 6 (T2) months, and 12 (T3) months postaccident. Relations between pain and posttraumatic stress symptoms...

The stressor criterion (criterion A) in the DSM-IV diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is frequently questioned. To explore the clinical and diagnostic usefulness of criterion A, we examined its value in predicting and capturing PTSD symptom clusters (criteria B-D) in a sample of trauma survivors. We studied 342 adult German-speaking...

In spite of the evident importance of suffering, the medical and psychological literature, with some exceptions, contains few contributions toward an understanding of its phenomenology, etiology, and alleviation. To enhance understanding of suffering in chronic physical disease, the authors applied qualitative content analysis to semistructured int...

Objective: Most of the data on psychological outcome and the mental health treatment available following natural disasters originate from the indigenous population of the region destroyed. Examining tourists returning from the area affected by the 2004 tsunami presents an opportunity of studying the impact of natural disasters on psychological out...

Motor vehicle accidents (MVA) and work-related injuries are two of the more common causes of chronic pain. Nevertheless, there is little evidence on predicting factors regarding the development of chronic pain following physical injury. The present study investigated temporal associations between accident-related factors, psychological factors [sym...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with high rates of psychiatric comorbidity. Existing theories consider comorbidity as a consequence of PTSD (model 1), PTSD and comorbidity as a consequence of shared factors of vulnerability (model 2), and comorbidity as a consequence of trauma-type specific mechanisms (model 3). To compare the ex...

We conducted a systematic review of prospective studies examining the independent predictive value of peritraumatic dissociation (PD) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology following single traumatic events. Insight into the independent predictive value may help to identify victims at risk for PTSD symptomatology. For this purpose...

To assess the impact of extremely preterm birth (24-26 weeks of gestation) on the mental health of parents two to six years after delivery, and to examine potential differences in post-traumatic growth between parents whose newborn infant died and those whose child survived. A total of 54 parents who had lost their newborn and 38 parents whose pret...

We estimated the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and identified predictors of self-rated PTSD symptoms in patients post-myocardial infarction (MI). We recruited 400 patients (mean age 60 +/- 12 years, 79% were men) with a previous acute index MI who were referred to a tertiary cardiology clinic. PTSD was assessed by the Clinician...

There is still marked variability in the findings concerning psychiatric disorders associated with traumatic injury. The aim of this study was to determine the incidence of acute stress disorder (ASD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following accidental injuries, and to predict the PTSD symptom level at 6 months, taking into particular con...

This review summarizes the available knowledge on the phenomenology of posttraumatic dreams. Posttraumatic nightmares are reported by up to 70% of individuals suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). An extensive review of polysomnographic studies suggests that neither this high incidence nor the occurrence of posttraumatic nightmares t...

To better understand differences in the outcome of injuries due to physical violence and accidents, twelve victims of violent crime were compared with matched accident survivors with regard to injury and event related variables as well as immediate and subsequent trauma related emotions and cognitions. Coping behaviour, symptoms of Acute Stress Dis...

To test the predictive power of peritraumatic dissociation for the development of psychopathology, the authors assessed symptoms of peritraumatic dissociation (Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire; PDEQ), posttraumatic stress disorder (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale; CAPS), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression...

Dreaming has fascinated mankind since the dawn of history. This article focuses on the psychologically oriented research which has three major areas of interest: (1) a description of dreams (What do dreams look like?), (2) factors influencing dream content and (3) the effects of dreams on subsequent waking life. The following definition attempts to...

The aim of this study was to analyze changes of coping strategies in severely injured accident victims over time and to compare patients with high and low posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom levels with regard to their coping patterns and accident-related cognitions. 106 consecutive patients with severe accidental injuries admitted to a tr...

Although the variability of dream content is large, typical dream themes that occur quite often and are reported by many people can be identified (e.g., being chased, falling, flying, failing an examination, being unable to find a toilet or restroom). The present study is an investigation of the stability of the rank order of the dream themes and o...

A literature search was conducted to collect randomized controlled studies evaluating the outcome of psychological and psychosocial interventions after attempted suicide and deliberate self-harm. Twenty-five studies meeting the inclusion criteria were identified. The studies are grouped according to the psychological approach chosen for the interve...

This study explores the role of cortical activation for dream recall in non rapid eye movement sleep. Six healthy young females were awakened in three consecutive nights five times per night from slow wave sleep and stage 2 sleep. Spectral analysis of the EEG was performed over the 32 s preceding awakening. Power spectra of the recall categories 'd...

The question whether personality dimensions explain the interindividual differences in dream recall frequency has often been investigated by dream researchers. The present findings confirm previous research which has shown that traits such as openness-to-experience and thin boundaries correlate substantially with dream recall frequency. However, co...

Previous research has indicated that personality factors such as openness to experience, creativity, visual memory, attitude toward dreams, and sleep behavior is related to home dream recall frequency (DRF). However, a study investigating all areas simultaneously within one sample in order to determine the percentage of variance explained by all va...

Zusammenfassung. In zwei quasi-experimentellen Studien wurde ein Modell zum Einsatz von Einflussstrategien in Organisationen uberpruft. Dazu wurden das wahrgenommene Machtpotenzial (Sanktionsmacht, Referenzmacht) sowie die Einflussziele „zusatzliche Arbeit ’delegieren’“ und „das eigene Image verbessern“ vollstandig intraindividuell variiert. An den...

The advent of functional imaging has reinforced the attempts to define dreaming as a sleep state-dependent phenomenon. PET scans revealed major differences between nonREM sleep and REM sleep. However, because dreaming occurs throughout sleep, the common features of the two sleep states, rather than the differences, could help define the prerequisit...

The aim of the study was to investigate whether the electromagnetic field (EMF) emitted by digital radiotelephone handsets affects brain physiology. Healthy, young male subjects were exposed for 30 min to EMF (900 MHz; spatial peak specific absorption rate 1 W/kg) during the waking period preceding sleep. Compared with the control condition with sh...