Dreaming in the Stalag: Dream analysis and observational cultures among Second World War British POWs

This article explores a programme of dream analysis carried out by Major Kenneth Hopkins during the Second World War, conducted in the unlikely circumstances of a POW camp. Hopkins, who was captured in 1940 and held in two camps within Germany, collected and analysed over 500 dreams from his fellow prisoners. The article seeks to place this project within historical context, connecting it to other dream analysis projects, including that of Mass-Observation (M-O), which was contemporary to Hopkins. Hopkins’s project has clear similarities to other observational cultures in the interwar period, including both M-O and popular ornithology. It also seeks to explore the motivation behind Hopkins’s attempts to collect dreams, his bibliography and sources, and his goals for the project. Ultimately, Hopkins’s analysis combined psychological and psychoanalytic theory with experimental and observational techniques to produce what he conceived to be a unique insight into the psychical impact of imprisonment. Hopkins’s death in 1942 prevented him from publishing the results of his analysis, but it exists as an early example of what would later be called ‘citizen science’ focused on the mind in captivity.