DREAMING IN A TOTALITARIAN SOCIETY - A READING OF BERADT,CHARLOTTE THE-3RD-REICH-OF-DREAMS

Charlotte Beradt's book The Third Reich of Dreams (1966), which presen ts the hundreds of dreams she gathered from people living in Nazi Germ any in the years 1933 to 1939, is an extremely valuable resource for d ream researchers interested in the social dimensions of dreams and dre aming. However, Beradt's work has rarely been examined in any depth. T his essay offers a careful, detailed reading of The Third Reich of Dre ams, using D.W. Winnicott's theory of transitional phenomena as a guid e. The essay suggests that dream studies can be a potent means of stud ying troubled societies, and perhaps of helping those societies to ove rcome their problems.