A new Israeli study of more than 200 dreams reported since the October 7, 2023, massacre has found that many Israelis are processing the trauma of that day and the ongoing war not only while awake but also in their sleep. Images of death, guilt, loneliness, and the struggle to rebuild repeatedly appear in their dreams.
The article, titled “When Language Falters, Dreams Speak: Search for Meaning in the Aftermath of Collective Trauma,” was recently published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life. It was authored by Dr. Pninit Russo-Netzer of Achva Academic College, and by Dr. Hilit Erel-Brodsky and Prof. Orit Taubman-Ben-Ari of Bar-Ilan University.
Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, the researchers analyzed 203 dream narratives collected in the wake of the Hamas terror attack and the Israel–Hamas War that followed.
They describe dreams as an “existential arena” in which people attempt to process shattered assumptions about safety, morality, and belonging after a collective trauma that affected an entire nation at once.
According to the study, many dreams circle repeatedly around the tension between death and life. On the one hand, they contain vivid depictions of threat, loss, and vulnerability that echo the events of October 7 and the subsequent war. On the other hand, they also introduce symbols of survival and continuity, as dreamers cling to the possibility that life will go on, despite everything they have witnessed.
A second thread running through the dreams is about guilt and responsibility. Some dreamers appear to grapple with questions of what they could or should have done differently, while others struggle with broader moral questions generated by war.
The study’s authors describe an ongoing battle in these dreams over agency, control, and the desire to feel that one’s actions still matter in a world that suddenly feels unpredictable and unsafe.
The study also highlights a movement between isolation and connection. Many of the narratives feature a sense of abandonment, of loneliness, or of being cut off from others, reflecting the emotional shock and displacement that followed the attacks.
Concurrently, the dreams often contain an intense longing for closeness, recognition, and belonging, as if the dreamers were searching for someone to see their pain and stand with them.
Finally, the researchers identify a progression from chaos to meaning-making. In some accounts, the dream content is fragmented, disjointed, and filled with confusing images tied to the news, the battlefield, or scenes of violence.
In others, there is an emerging narrative that slowly links those fragments into a story that can be told, even if the meaning is partial or fragile. Thus, dreams may help people begin to rebuild a coherent inner world after their fundamental beliefs about security and everyday life were shattered on October 7.
Dreams can be used to 'trace how Israelis are trying to repair their sense of self'
The article suggests that dreams are not simply random or purely symptomatic but a symbolic space that mediates between individual suffering and broader cultural and national narratives, including Jewish and Israeli ideas about identity, community, faith, and sacrifice.
By looking closely at dreams, the authors say, it is possible to trace how Israelis are trying to repair their sense of self and purpose in the wake of a national catastrophe.
Clinically, the researchers call for therapists working with those affected by October 7 and the war to take dream material seriously as part of treatment.
They note that certain forms of distress, including moral injury, shaken worldviews, and deep existential questions about life and death, may first surface in dreams, particularly when language falters in waking life.
Exploring these dreams in therapy, they suggest, can support what they term “existential repair” – a gradual attempt to restore meaning and inner stability.
The dream study appears against the backdrop of what other researchers have described as an unprecedented mental health crisis in Israel since October 7.
Recent data point to sharp increases in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety across the population, along with growing concern over the long-term impact on soldiers, survivors, evacuees, and bereaved families.
Within that broader picture, the new paper suggests that the nights have become another arena of struggle and potential healing.
For many Israelis, sleep is no longer a refuge from the day’s news. It is another stage on which the horror of October 7 and its aftermath are replayed, questioned, and slowly, albeit imperfectly, woven into a new understanding of self and of national life.
By paying attention to what surfaces in dreams, the authors argue, clinicians and patients may gain another route into the moral and existential wounds left by the massacre and into the long, unfinished work of rebuilding meaning in its shadow.