[dreaming] initial comment(s)

          I've been reading the comments to date with interest.
          Although I admire Dr. Lavie's meticuousness in cataloguing
          discrepancies and ommissions (too bad he wasn't a reviewer
          on this paper), I don't feel these negate being
          able to discuss the findings. For example, in figure 4,
          although he's right that there is a blatant mistake
          in either the numbers on the horizontal axes or
          their labeling as simple level rather that interaction
          coefficeints, I tend to assume that the
          relationships between symptoms and events are being
          accurately represented. And although, yes, it would be
          interesting to know more about cause of death of
          relatives, it is still interesting to see how this variable
          interacts with dream recall--"violence and accidents"
          rules out the natural causes that would account for most of
          the variations not due to the occupation.

          In response to Kathy's comments about the depression
          findings, I wanted to say that since that although paper &
          pencil dperessions measures have reasonable correlations
          with clinical depression in a population without major
          significant external losses, the items include many things
          about sadness and crying that pick up normal grief reactions
          also and in this population, unless you looked at a few
          particular items about low self-esteem, you may have
          something that is more sadness that "depression" in the
          maladaptive sense. And although "anxiety" is the natural
          reaction to some of these traumatic events, sadness may be
          the more natural one to death of a relative and other of the
          loss-related events.

          I know the focus was intentionally on dream recall, but it
          seems the author has only scratched the surface of a very
          rich data base. I'd love to see future analyses of themes
          such as Cartwright's distinction between repetitive
          unpleasant dreams vs. ones that attempt mastery or Terr's of
          literal re-enactments vs. incorporating traumas into ongoing
          concerns in terms of whether these distinguish sypmtomatic
          vs. nonsymptomatic children

                                                -Deirdre Barrett