Study: Impact of 9/11 terror attacks demonstrates psychological trauma, manifesting in dreams

By Joene Hendry

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A comparative analysis of dream images suggests how deeply the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks impacted Americans' emotions, researchers report.

Everyone experienced some sort of trauma, or at least emotional arousal by these events, Dr. Ernest Hartmann told Reuters Health. "We found, surprisingly, even dreams could pick this up," said Hartmann, of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.

Hartmann and colleagues assessed the dreams of 11 men and 33 women living outside of Manhattan when the attacks occurred. The participants, who ranged in age from 22 to 70 years, had been recording their dreams for years, and none had relatives or friends who died in the attacks, the investigators note in the journal Sleep.

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SOURCE: Sleep, February 2008.

My analysis is that the events of 9/11 have psychologically traumatized a majority of Americans and world inhabitants. 9/11 was as much a psychological attack as it was a devastating physical attack. I would add that this includes the destruction of World Trade Center 7, the 47-story steel-framed skyscraper which was not struck by an aircraft yet collapsed at 5:20 PM ET, 9/11/2001, some seven+ hours after the collapse of the Twin Towers.

Further, the "politics" of 9/11, as pioneered by 9/11 Evangelist Rudolph W. Giuliani and practiced by a multitude of "neoconservatives," such as John McCain, usually involves the perpetuation and manipulation of the psychological trauma brought about by 9/11. Those who would use the tragic events of 9/11 as an instrument of "fear" for political expedience (including the rhetoric of Clinton and Obama) become the very perpetrators of terror that they purport to protect us from in the absurdly-named "global war on terror"

How does one win a "war" on a psychological state (or nefarious tactic, if you prefer)?