Dreaming under fire: the psyche in times of continuous stress
Continuous stress and trauma are manifested in dreams, the study of which expands our knowledge concerning the unconscious reactions to the trauma and the efforts of coping with continuous traumatic situations. Since September 2000, the area of the Gaza envelope in Israel has been under the threat of rocket attacks. Such continuous life-threatening stimuli can be considered complex trauma. In this research, people living near the Gaza Strip were asked to write their dreams and their associations to the dreams during 4 consecutive weeks. Six hundred and nine dreams were collected from 44 women and 18 men (age range 14–62). In another research dreams of Palestinians and Israelis were collected immediately after the last Gaza wars. Differences in dream themes between gender and age groups were found, conveying the depth of psychological experience of living and dreaming under fire.
The Role of Dreams of Ads in Purchase Intention
This study explored whether dreaming about advertisements affects consumer behavior. Researchers surveyed Iranian consumers about their ad exposure, ad-related dreams, and purchase intentions. They found that seeing ads increases buying intent—and that dreaming about those ads further strengthens this effect. In short, dreams don’t just replay brand messages; they can amplify them. (Dreaming, 2019)
How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism
This essay revisits Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, a clandestine archive of 300 dreams gathered in 1930s Berlin that reveal how authoritarianism penetrated the unconscious. By treating dreams as a collective diary of fear, complicity, and occasional resistance, the article argues that Beradt’s work remains a vital, overlooked lens on the psychic life of totalitarian rule (The New Yorker, 2019).
Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep & Dreams During the Civil War
The book explores how Americans—soldiers, civilians, enslaved and free—lived not only amid the open horrors of the Civil War but also in the private realms of sleeplessness, dreams, and fears. It shows that dreams served many roles: they echoed anxieties, prophesied death, offered escape, maintained bonds across distance, and helped people make sense of war’s disruption (The University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
Dreams and the Organization
This special issue explores the intersection of psychoanalysis, dreams, and organizational studies, highlighting how unconscious processes shape management, leadership, and organizational identity (Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2013).
Creativity, Organizational Knowledge, and the Power of Dreams
The study shows that project managers whose dreams are emotionally vivid tend to lead projects rated as more creative—especially when they’re motivated by internal satisfaction rather than external pressure. It also finds that leadership styles that emphasize belonging, support and decentralized decision-making (like clan or team styles) amplify this effect, while rigid hierarchical styles tend to suppress the creativity-dream link (Journal of Organizational Change Management, 2013).