“Our nights do not belong to us”

Abstract

Abstract The research aim was to gain a more thorough understanding of the experiences by former prisoners of the trauma of the time spent in a Nazi concentration camp and reworking it by dreaming. The material comprised 117 written accounts obtained by psychiatrist Stanisław Kłodziński in the 1970s from 38 former Polish national prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau (17 women and 21 men). A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the narratives was carried out and two types of dreams were compared in terms of chosen characteristics: camp and post-camp dreams. Camp experiences and a negative emotional tone occurred significantly more often in post-camp dreams. The “beauty” and “symbolicity” categories were present significantly more frequently in camp dreams. It was found that motives related to the time spent in the camp appeared persistently in dreams. This was accompanied by a negative affect and lack of symbolicity typical of PTSD nightmares.