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Narrative Inquiry: Online-First Articles

“Our nights do not belong to us”

An analysis of narratives about camp and post-camp dreams of former prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau

ORCID logo | Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw
ORCID logo | Institute of Psychology, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw

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.

Keywords: trauma, stress, dreams, memory, narrative, PTSD, narrative psychology, qualitative research, prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Trauma memory
    • Creating trauma narratives
    • Dreams and trauma: Between suffering and adaptation
      • Dreams of concentration camp prisoners
  • The research problem
  • Method
    • Research material
    • The narrative analysis method
      • Quantitative method
      • Qualitative method
  • Results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis
    • Camp experiences
    • Emotionality
    • Beauty
    • Temporal reference
    • Symbolicity
  • Discussion
    • Camp dreams
    • Post-War dreams
    • Emotions in dreams
    • The work of sleep: Between concrete thinking and symbolic and narrative
    • The limitations of own research
    • Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.21108.wos
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