IMAGINATION, COGNITION AND PERSONALITY, Vol.

33(1-2) 193-204, 2013-2014

CONTENT OF DREAMS FROM WWII POWS*

DEIRDRE BARRETT
Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
ZACH SOGOLOW
ANGELA OH
JASMINE PANTON
MALCOLM GRAYSON
MELANIE JUSTINIANO
Harvard College, Boston, Massachusetts

ABSTRACT

This article examines the content of dreams from British officers held in
Laufen, a Nazi POW camp, during the years 1940-1942. The POWs dreams
have more content concerning battles, imprisonment, escape, and food than
the Hall and van de Castle male norms from the same era. The POW dreams
do not have as much of any type of social interaction. Their dreams contain
less friendliness, sexuality, and even less aggression than the male norms.
However, aggression was unusually extreme when it occurred, and its
content was linked to previous battles rather than camp life. POWs had less
good fortune or misfortune in their dreams along with frequent bland dreams
about the tedium of the camp. Their dream characters included higher percentages of males, family members, and the dead; they had fewer friends or
animal characters than the male normsperhaps simply reflecting who they
were in contact with at the camp. Overall, these POWs patterns resembled
other prison populations rather than other post-combatants, which may be
because this particular group was captured early during WWII.

*A version of this article was presented at The 29th Annual Conference of The International
Association for the Study of Dreams, Berkeley California, June 2012.
193
! 2013, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/IC.33.1-2.g
http://baywood.com

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Very little has been written about dreams in prison. Bart Koet described Dutch
prisoners dreaming of institutional tedium and nostalgic visions of home and
family. Most frightening dreams in his populations were from violent offenders
about their crimes or other events prior to incarceration (Koet, 2009). A group
of former Guantanamo detainees reported many dreams of food, being at QA: Need ref. with all
home, and announcements that they were being released from prison (Barrett authors (6 total) in ref.
et al., 2012). Also of relevance to the present study, Charlotte Beradt collected section
dreams from German civilians during the Nazi regime. These were extremely
bland, and her main conclusion was that the oppressive environment was so
extreme as to repress even dreams (Beradt, 1985). People exposed to the most
extreme, survivors of Nazi concentration camps, recall many fewer dreams than
other populations, even when awakened from REM sleep in a laboratory (Lavie &
Kaminer, 1996).
Much more data has been gathered on dreams of combatants in war
though all large samples have been collected after the person is away from
the arena of combat. These find typical ptsd patterns of redreaming the
most frightening experiences with less distortion than in other populations
dreams. Soldiers also have more anxious dreams even without recognizable war content (Punamaki, 2007; Van der Kolk, Blitz, Burr, Sherry,
& Hartmann, 1984; Wilmer, 1996). Civilians in war have post-traumatic
nightmares which often fade over time after shorter conflicts (Barrett &
Behbehani, 2003), but a study of civilians who suffered major trauma in WWII
showed 25% of them dreaming of the trauma decades later (Schreuder, Kleijn,
& Rooijmans, 2000).

THE PRESENT STUDY

The present study focuses on a collection of dreams from 79 British officers
held in Laufen, a Nazi POW camp during the years 1940-1942. These dreams
were collected on the mornings after they had occurred by Major Kenneth
Hopkins, one of the prisoners. Major Hopkins was planning to use the data
for his doctoral dissertation at University of Birmingham which was supervised by Charles Valentine, the author of a psychoanalytically-oriented book on
dreams (Valentine, 1922). However, the project was never completed because
Hopkins died of emphysema 2 years into his imprisonment.
Laufen is a castle which was appropriated by the German Army to house
captured British officers early in WWII. Later, many French and a few other
Allied officers were housed there. In late 1942, all officers were transferred
elsewhere and the prison then served contain civilian British and Americans
captured from the Channel Islands. During the period in question, however, all
inmates were British officersmost of whom had been captured in the battle
of France (i.e., very early in the war) (see Figure 1).

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195

Figure 1. Prisoners in Laufen Courtyard.

The Nazi POW camps were nothing like their concentration camps. Historians
generally report them to have followed Geneva conventions. Major Hopkins
wrote to his wife soon after capture:
The camp is well organized, comfortable, and the scenery beautiful. Send
me my old khaki jacket, a collar and tie, some chocolate and some tobacco.
Keep cheerful, things might have been much worse.

Prisoners staged shows for each other (see Figure 2); a website with memorabilia from Laufen camp features pictures of the soldiers performing a burlesque
show for each other and guards and a Christmas card (see Figure 3 drawn by one
of the POWs with oddly festive barbed wire wreathes (Allan, 2003).
Six men are known to have escaped from Laufen as a group; much has been
written about the Laufen Six. They were recaptured, sent to another prison
camp, Colditz, which the Nazis believed to be escape-proof. The same men
then escaped from Colditz. There are books, a film, and even a board game
titled Escape from Colditz, but all of these refer to the officers of interest as
the Laufen Six (Reid, 1987). Two of the Laufen Six are represented in the
present dream sample (see Figure 4).

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BARRETT ET AL.

Figure 2. Laufen prison inmate show.

When the Laufen camp was liberated in 1945 by Allied forces, the dream
journals were found. Allied staff mailed them to Hopkins dissertation advisor,
Charles Valentine, with a note saying a letter from him was found in the notebooks
and, No doubt you will be able to forward them to Major Hopkins. Hopkins had
died in September 1942. The collection remained with Valentine until his
retirement, then stored at the University of Birmingham Library, and eventually
housed at the Wellcome Collection in London.
METHOD
The late Major Hopkins performed all the original data collection, so some
details are unknown. Hopkins wrote in his letters to Valentine that he approached
all prisoners who were in the camp at the beginning of the study, and subsequently new arrivals, to inquire who was willing to participate. Hopkins describes
most as agreeing to participate and amassed 79 subjects. He recorded names
on one page and referred to them by subject number everywhere else. Hopkins
recorded the dreams each morning after they occurred. He makes it clear that
at least some of the subjects were keeping a written dream journal, but all
the dreams are recorded in Hopkins extremely neat handwriting. Its not clear if

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197

Figure 3. Laufen prison Christmas card.

he recopied all of them or if some were verbally dictated to him. All have
the date dreamed and subject number. Many dreams were accompanied by
drawingsmost typically ariel maps (see Figure 5). There were originally
640 dreams, but one volume did not make it to the Wellcome Collection.
The present analysis is based on 492 dreams from 79 menthe last 5 of the
6 journals which Hopkins filled. Hopkins did not record ages of subjects.
The officers were mostly of junior ranks and large group Laufen photos
appear to have men between 20 and 40, so the mean is somewhere in the young
adult age range.

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Figure 4. Major Pat Reid on his successful escape costume.

For the present analysis, raters coded the dreams on the Hall and van de Castle
(1966) scales for characters, aggression, friendliness, good/fortune, sexuality,
success, failure, and striving. Inter-rater reliability ranged from to 88% to 100%
for different categories on 50 dreams which were coded by both, so a single raters
results were used for analysis. The POW dream codings were compared to the
original Hall and van de Castle male norms. Unlike some other recent studies
which have done this, our sample was remarkably close to the time period of
the normative sample and, as already discussed, similar if inexact in age range.
We also rated the POW dreams on ad hoc scales for presence/absence of
the following content categories: reference to the POW camp, reference to any
imprisonment, escape from POW camp, other escape themes, battles of WWII,
other warlike imagery, and eating. For comparison purposes, we also rated the
original 500 Hall and van de Castle dreams on these scales.
Percentage differences on all these content variables, both Hall and van de
Castles and the ad hoc scales, were transformed into h scores before calculating
their significance. For the Hall and van de Castle scales, this was done with the
automated DreamSat sheet (Schneider & Domhoff, undated).

Figure 5. Typical dream illustration for Hopkins data.

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RESULTS
The POWs had significantly fewer females, friends, or animal characters
while having more male, family, and dead or imaginary characters. All but
one of their dead or imaginary codings were for dead characters. They had
significantly less aggression, friendliness, sexuality, misfortune, good fortune,
striving, success, or failure than did normative males (see Table 1).
On the ad hoc scales, the prisoners dreams had more content about the POW
camp, other imprisonment, escape from the POW camp, other escape themes,
WWII battles, other warlike battles, and more eating (see Table 2).
Some of the escape dreams, not surprisingly, came from the two prisoners who
did ultimately escape. An example of a literal one referring to the camp was:

Tale 1. POWs vs Hall & van de Castle Male Norms

POWs

Norms

Male/Female Percent
Familiarity percent
Friends percent
Family percent
Dead & imaginary percent
Animal percent

73%
47%
26%
16%
01%
04%

67%
45%
31%
12%
00%
06%

+.11
+.03
.11
+.11
+.11
.09

*.050
.549
*.029
*.027
*.018
*.046

Aggression/Friendliness percent
Befriender percent
Aggressor percent
Physical aggression percent

42%
40%
39%
44%

59%
50%
40%
50%

.33
.22
.01
.12

**.001
.094
.960
.257

Self-negativity percent
Bodily misfortunes percent
Negative emotions percent
Dreamer emotions percent

53%
25%
77%
50%

65%
29%
80%
51%

.25
.09
.09
.02

**.003
.534
.357
.905

Aggression
Friendliness
Sexuality
Misfortune
Good fortune
Success
Failure
Striving

20%
19%
01%
16%
03%
06%
07%
11%

47%
38%
12%
36%
06%
15%
15%
27%

.59
.44
.48
.47
.13
.30
.26
.40

**.000
**.000
**.000
**.000
.066
**.000
**.000
**.000

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Table 2. Ad hoc Scales POW vs. Male Norms

Dream variable
Actual POW camp
Any other imprisonment
Total
Escape POW camp
Escape themes other
Total
Battle WWII
Battle other warlike
Total
Eating

POWs

Male norm

18%
4%
22%

n/a
1%
1%

.20*
.78**

3%
4%
7%

n/a
1%
1%

.20*
.34*

6%
9%
15%

n/a
2%
2%

.33**
.51**

5%

2%

.17*

Myself and three others escaped from prison. We lay up all day near the
Slav border and we were going to cross at night. As evening wore on, we
got prepared and were lucky enough to get a car. Around midnight we
got into the car. The one driving the car was dressed as a Gerry officer.
Woke up sweating although with effort not with fear.

The same prisoner also had metaphoric one of a horse race but he wasnt
trying to win, just trying to get the horse away from one area to another without
anyone noticing and stopping him. At the end he succeeded, suddenly an audience
exploded with mirthful laughter.
The experimenter commented parenthetically that the laughter may mean
that the dreamer thinks that if the war ends soon their escape attempts will seem
unnecessary and therefore laughable, amusing. However, that dreamer really
did escape and the experimenter died in the camp. It was striking how often
Hopkins and the dreamers made reference to expectations that the war would
be over soonall made during the years 1940-42.
A non-escapee had the following rather anti-escape dream (which still coded
for having escape content) which implied there might be tense disagreements
around this topic in the waking world:
The guards had gone off, leaving their rifles stuck in ground. I was
hoping no one would order us to arm ourselves and break out as I felt time
was not right.

Many of the battle-themed dreams were realistic:

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BARRETT ET AL.

I was in a large ship going down a river from Southampton. And was bombed
the whole way by German aircraft.

But they could also be horrific in surreal ways:

Two Englishmen running from Germans intentionally dive into a vat of green
acid. I am horrified. I want to help them, but I knew I would be too late.

or occasionally fanciful:
Civil War in England and something to do with chess. There was a red queen
on one side and white queen on the other. The white queens name was
Ariadne. Ariadne said she was rightful heir to the throne of England and
the dark one was an interloper. She was in England but her army had to land
at Portsmouth and the dark queen marched on Watford and occupied it.
Ariadne advanced as far as Kingston but didnt have the force to go straight
through to London. Both queens whereever they went received much
cheering and acclaim by the populace.

Food appeared with amazing frequency. This was often combined with content
about homecomings. The following was typical:
I was at home and went to the larder and ate everything I could see. Went
out and met my sister and a friend at a restaurant and had a large dinner.
Then went to another pub and had some food there. Then went to another
pub and had more food. Went back to the first pub and found a good mixture
of drinksbarley wine and mild ale. Then I had a dish of prunes and
custard into which a bottle of ale had also been poured. I rejoined my sister
and had another meal. Then back to the pub and had a large mixture of various
snacks. While I was there, some German guards arrived with more prisoners.

DISCUSSION
The POW dreams are blander on most dimensions. Their contain less of
any kind of social interactionpositive or negativefor the length of the recalled
segment than most other populations as well as the original normative sample used
for comparison here. When these POWs dreamed of aggression, it was usually
extremekilling by shooting, stabbing, or bombingor serious attempts to kill
by those means. In contrast, in the male normative sample, aggressions were most
commonly arguing, insulting, andwhen physically aggressive at allshoving
or pushing. If the wartime battle examples, many of which re-enact real traumas,
were omitted from the results, the POW dreams would look blander yet.
The POWs sex dreams are not only fewer, but also peculiarly frustrated.
These scores tended to come from seductive female behavior which was not
possible to act on such as the sexy clothing of an officers wife (a dream
wifethere were no actual officers wives in the camp), a lacivious dance by a
British aristocrat, and a proposition from a friends wife that involved wearing
a massive, painful prophylactic. The low rate of striving scores indicates that,

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203

in their dreams, the POWs were not yearning for and achieving in other assorted
areas as much as normative samples.
The higher percentage of male characters and dead characters probably
reflected previous wartime and camp experience. Day residue may account for
other character differences. Laufen lacked animals or the prisoners friends and
also any animalstwo groups of characters especially low for the POW dreams.
The high numbers of family members could have been a function of either
nostalgic longing or the fact that they were exchanging letters with families at
a very high rate with plenty of time to write and not much else to do.
It cannot be ruled out that the Laufen dreams are blander because the men
knew a peer was reading all their dreams or due to some other quirk of the
collection process. However, these dreams resemble the blandness of Berendts
sample from civilians in Nazi Germany. The Laufen dreams are even more
similar to other prison populationssharing the characteristics of blandness,
low interactions, and reserving their occasional enthusiasm for dreams of release,
reunion with loved ones, andnot leastfor gorging on favorite foods. This
group differs from other prison dreams only in that there are a small proportion of post-traumatic dreams directly related to the period of combat before
capture. Probably the early capture of the Laufen population is why their dreams
resemble other prisoners more than other post-combatants.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to thank the Wellcome Collection in London and its director, Ken
Arnold, for providing access to this collection of dreams. We wish to acknowledge the late Major Kenneth Hopkins for carefully recording them during his
own imprisonment.

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Direct reprint requests to:

Deirdre Barrett
352 Harvard St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
e-mail: dbarrett@hms.harvard.edu