Rosalind D. Cartwright’s scientific contributions

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.