Sep 4 2013 4:30pm  The Secret World of Sleep (Excerpt)  Penelope
A Lewis       One really fascinating angle of the overnight
therapy idea relates to pathological conditions like
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Soldiers coming back from
battle and people who have witnessed horrific accidents are just
two of the groups that often suffer from this disorder. The
flashbacks they experience can come at any time, they may have
trouble sleeping, and the rest they do obtain is often haunted
by horrific dreams about their experiences. Simply put, PTSD is
the repeated, intrusive remembering of highly arousing (and
upsetting) negative memories, and the consequences can ruin
marriages, destroy lives, and lead to long-term depression and
even suicide. If REM really does serve to dissociate memories of
horrific situations from the emotional responses that originally
accompanied them then it clearly isn’t doing its job properly in
people with PTSD. Something has gone wrong with the system.  As
mentioned earlier, someti