Anxiety in the Dreams of a Neurosurgical Patient

MANY METHODS have been used to evaluate psychological stress in the human. Subjects have included surgical patients,¹psychiatric patients,^2-4"normal control" subjects,^5,6metabolic patients,⁷as well as many others. Measurements used to evaluate the degree of stress experienced have included affect ratings,⁴hormone determinations,^1-6as well as peripheral autonomic variables. Some subjects have been studied under "normal" circumstances,^5,6and in other instances stress has been experimentally induced.⁸ The purpose of this paper is to present the clinical course of an epileptic patient hospitalized on the Neurosurgical nursing unit of the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Variations in the degree of his anxiety during hospitalization were evaluated by scoring the manifest content of dreams reported by the patient during that time. The instrument for scoring the dream material was designed by Drs. Edith