Cartwright had shown that it was not enough to have REM sleep, or even generic dreaming, when it comes to resolving our emotional past. Her patients required REM sleep with dreaming, but dreaming of a very specific kind: that which expressly involved dreaming about the emotional themes and sentiments of the waking trauma. It was only that content-specific form of dreaming that was able to accomplish clinical remission and offer emotional closure in these patients, allowing them to move forward into a new emotional future, and not be enslaved by a traumatic past.
