Two articles on emerging dream/nightmare therapies.
Guiding Your Sleep While You’re Awake – NYTimes.com
many therapists use behavioral interventions to reduce nightmares or guide the waking patient toward having a mastery dream — using the conscious mind to control the wild ways of the unconscious.
Some of these techniques have been in use for years. In one treatment, known as lucid dreaming, patients are taught to become aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress. In another, called in vivo desensitization, they are exposed while awake to what may be haunting them in their sleep — for example, a live snake, caged and harmless — until the fear subsides. Both techniques have been researched extensively.
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Following a Script to Escape a Nightmare — NYTimes.comThe treatments are controversial. Some therapists, particularly Jungian analysts, take issue with changing nightmares’ content, arguing that dreams send crucial messages to the waking mind.