ArticlePDF Available

Sleep structure in depression, schizophrenia, psychosomatics, borderline syndrome and anorexia nervosa: A comparison

Authors:

Abstract

Samples consisting of 10 patients out of each of the following diagnostic groups are compared to each other, as well as to a selected control group, with regard to their sleep polygram: narcisssistic depression resp. MDD, schizophrenia, psychosomatic and borderline disease and anorexia nervosa. The different and common aspects of the standard parameters of sleep (quantitative proportions of the sleep stages) and the parameters of structure (segmentation of time) are illustrated in a synopsis. Furthermore the authors attempt to compare the sleep structure of individual diseases with those of other diseases and with those of the selected control group in terms of delimitative entities. On the background of sleep sturctures, which also entails comparisons of ectreme groups with regard to the allocation of NREM 3 and the length of REM latency, the attempt is made to investigate how far aspects of sleep structure coincide with aspects of human-structure as described by Ammon, on the basis of his human-structural concept with respect to the various psychiatric diseases.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
In this study the author describes the particular dynamics of dream and reality during the analytic treatment of schizophrenia. The interior reality of the patient submerges him leaving hardly a place for dream in his life. With the aid of therapy the patient will be gradually able to build up the external reality. Dreams will emerge then and become an analysable element in the treatment. The presented case shows how an appropriate technique, which strengthens and supports the ego in its confrontation with reality, enables the patient at first to reestablish the boundaries between internal and external realitiy, so that the analytical work of dream and transference interpretation can be undertaken without fearing a psychotic explosion. The therapist has to chose the decisive point at which he can plunge in the psychotic reality of the patient in order to resolve the symbiotic transference and to guide the patient on the way towards reality and recovery.
Article
The positive effect of delta-sleep on retention depends on REM sleep, which facilitates this positive effect, but at the same time has its own inhibitory effect on retention. The nature of this double influence of REM sleep on retention is discussed in the context of the restoration of search activity being the main REM sleep function. Such restoration can explain the indirect positive effect of REM sleep on retention, especially on retention of the unusual and emotionally meaningful information that can cause distress. Psychic activity in REM sleep (dreams) has a direct negative effect on retention, which may be due to the interference between dream images and learned material.
Article
A new approach to the sleep stages role in memory is discussed in the context of the two opposite patterns of behavior-search activity and renunciation of search. Search activity is activity designed to change the situation (or the subjects attitudes to it) in the absence of a definite forecast of the results of such activity, but with the constant consideration of these results at all stages of activity. Search activity increases general adaptability and body resistance while renunciation of search decreases adaptability and requires REM sleep for its compensation. Unprepared learning, which is often accompanied by failures on the first steps of learning, is suggested to produce renunciation of search, which decreases learning ability, suppress retention, and increase REM sleep requirement. A prolonged REM sleep deprivation before training causes learned helplessness and disturbs the learning process, while short REM sleep deprivation cause the "rebound" of the compensatory search activity that interferes with passive avoidance. REM sleep deprivation performed after a training session can increase distress caused by a training procedure, with the subsequent negative outcome on retention.
Article
Despite the importance of dreams in psychoanalysis and in other methods of psychotherapeutic treatment, and the availability. of dreams through the technique of monitoring sleep in the laboratory (Aserinsky and Kleitman 1953; Dement and Kleitman 1957a, b), no research studies of the influence of psychotherapy on dreams using laboratory methods have been reported. Some nonlaboratory studies, however, suggest that dream life does indeed change in patients who have undergone a course of successful psychotherapy (Bergin 1970; Maultsby and Gram 1974; Whitman et al. 1967). The present study investigates the effects of psychotherapy on laboratory-collected dreams before and after psychotherapy. It is predicted that those for whom psychotherapy has been successful will show differential changes in their dreams relative to those with unsuccessful psychotherapy outcomes. These findings are pertinent to the questions of the relation of dreaming to waking mental life.
Article
A group of 22 psychotics (19 schizophrenics) was recorded in acute and/or chronic phase by series of 3 consecutive nights. Our main purposes were to study correlations between subgroups and sleep patterns and to follow the clinical evolution of these patients in looking at the quantitative and/or qualitative modifications of the various sleep states. Schizoaffective psychotics showed a lack of the "first night effect". The patients recorded in acute and in remission phases differ from unmedicated normal subjects: the former had less deep sleep and more "intermediate phases": the later presented an increase, sometimes very high, of REM total duration. Finally, within each subgroup, the analysis of individuals pointed out, for some of them, an evolution opposite to the general tendency.