Dream On

Many years ago a woman in her early 30's had been referred to me by her sister. She started the session saying she didn’t really know what it meant to see a psychologist, or what exactly it was that psychologists do—common-enough opening gambit in the context of people coming to psychotherapy in South Africa. By the end of the first session I suspected that she was less naïve about the psychotherapeutic process than she had initially made out, and that her opening cautious remarks were precisely that—caution, wariness, leaving herself room to manoeuvre. However, she started the second session telling me she had had a dream during the past week and proceeded to tell me about it. So much for not knowing what psychotherapy is, and yet it is the place where she thought she could come and talk about her dreams! What this therapeutic anecdote reveals is that dreams appear in psychotherapy, albeit even infrequently, and most often are unsolicited.

Even stranger is that people will often say they have had a dream and give very few details about the content of the dream, or they will relate it in some detail and not yet want to talk about it, or sometimes they will wonder what a particular symbol or image might mean and not want to pursue it any further. It is rare that the person will want to engage with the dream in any detail. Nevertheless, in this brief article I shall raise some issues pertaining to the manifestation of dreams in psychotherapy, while at the same time suggesting the continuing value of Freud’s (1900 / 1991) seminal work, The interpretation of dreams, as a valid resource in interpreting dreams.

The continued presence of dreams in “the private world of psychotherapy” makes one wonder what status they currently enjoy in social and cultural contexts. Albeit that some cultures and traditions still reference dreams in certain rituals and practices, mostly in a prophetic mode, it seems that dreams feature very seldom in general social intercourse. The contemporary secular view of dreams does not seem one that attributes much significance to dreams. Just witness some of our everyday expression with regards to dreams: “I wouldn’t do that in my wildest dreams”; “You must be dreaming!”; and the idiotic, “It was only a dream”, said to a child who wakes up distressed from a bad dream or nightmare.

So what are people doing when they present a dream in therapy, and what is it that we as therapists should do with these dreams? Firstly, as obvious as this may sound, we need to acknowledge the dream’s presence and give it a psychological status. Giving the dream a psychological status means acknowledging it as something personal and communicative, which is not the same as saying that we must interpret it, not immediately anyway. Secondly, regarding their psychological status should we read dreams as communicative in a symptomatic sense, as signifiers. But then the question arises: “Signifiers of what?”

Lacan made a distinction between the symptom or symptoms (symptôme, in French), and sinthome (the archaic form of writing symptôme). The main difference is that the sinthome is addressed to no one, and operates as pure jouissance, pure joy, pure pleasure. Our symptoms, understood as the Lacanian sinthome, are to be experienced, enjoyed, identified with, and not only subjected to psychoanalytic “dissolution”. Could we regard dreams that are “presented” in therapy in this way (as sinthome), and view them as not necessarily addressed to anyone (not even the therapist)? For this reason, it might be interesting to focus on the personal experience of the dream as a way of beginning the interpretation. For example, we might ask, what was the dream like, what did it feel like, or even what did it make you feel (during the dream or upon waking)? We can ask what dreams evoke emotionally and in other ways (as evoking some past memory), as opposed to approaching dreams as always or only having a hidden message or meaning. Thirdly, it matters how we view dreams in therapy in terms of what we do with them as psychotherapists, or how we talk about them with the person.

Another dimension of what to make of the dream in therapy comes from the person, the so-called patient. What does the person want us to do with their dream? What status does it have for them? What do they think they are telling us when they tell us their dream?

Oddly, people tell us their dreams and yet prefer not to talk about them as though they are wilfully choosing to be ignorant of what they might mean. As Adam Phillips (1995) notes: “... the analyst is an expert in the forms of ignorance— the forms ignorance can take in the service of self-protection”. Talking about the dream, and yet not talking about the dream, can be seen as a form of defensiveness that allows the patient to believe that they have said something personal, revealing even, while not really lifting the lid of repression.

Developing this idea of the simultaneity of openness and defensive, we could say that psychoanalysis is a theory of what is unbearable to us as humans, what we need to exclude (from our awareness, from our lives) in order to be human. These exclusions are our terrors, our demons, our traumas, what we can’t bear to remember, or experience, or know about. And maybe dreams, in psychotherapy, operate partly to exclude, and partly to include our terrors, what are unbearable to us. We can experience the dream (as sinthome), we can “enjoy” its ineffability, we can even talk about it without knowing, and sometimes without even wanting to know, what it means. The person can believe that they are “cooperating with their treatment” when they tell us a dream, and yet still maintain the repression of their disabling (unconscious) conflicts.

Our dreams are simultaneously familiar and alien, even alienating, in the sense of being personal, intimate even, and yet they also seem to have this “other” quality to them, they appear as strange and puzzling to us, not unlike symptoms. And like symptoms, when you ask people what they think their dreams mean, or what they make of some of the images, they are usually not very forthcoming. This lack of a sense of what the dream, or parts of the dream, might mean is not necessarily a sign of defensiveness, but seems to point more to the “other” quality of dreams, to a strangeness within us, and so people are often baffled by their dreams. Seeing as psychotherapy is a relationship of intimacy without being intimate at the same time, and so maybe dreams are a way of the person being “safely” intimate with themselves, and with us. After all, for Freud, to talk about dreams was to talk about our sexuality.

Freud's The interpretation of dreams (1900)

Freud considered his dream book as his most important theoretical contribution, and in the preface to the third (revised) edition (1931) of The interpretation of dreams, he noted: "It contains, even according to my present-day judgement, the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." In terms of the comprehensiveness of the theory of psychoanalysis that is presented, The interpretation of dreams is clearly Freud's most significant and central work, and a work he was loathe to revise in the many editions that were published during his lifetime. His theory of dreams was derived from:

i) His self-analysis, following the death of his father in 1896;

ii) His work with neurotic patients. It is worth noting that Freud did not solicit dreams from his patients. In his early work with Josef Breuer on hysteria, he and Breuer were surprised and fascinated by the fact that these early patients of psychoanalysis chose to bring their dreams to the sessions. All they were asked to do was to “free associate”, to talk about whatever came into their minds. As with everything else that was presented in the sessions, the dreams became material to analyse, to interpret.

iii)His concern to develop a theory of the unconscious. What intrigued Freud about dreams was that he knew they didn’t matter, meaning that if we don’t interpret our dreams, nothing untoward happens to us. Most people go through their lives without paying much attention to their dreams, and are seemingly in perfectly good (mental) health. Freud’s insight was to suggest that no matter where we focused our attention, on the person’s general “freely associated” talk in the sessions, on their talk about their symptoms and conflicts, or their dreams, we could still come to an understanding of their intrapsychic conflicts and the meaning of their symptoms.

So Freud's starting point was that dreams can be interpreted. Dreams have a psychological meaning, and this meaning can be made clear. He was at pains throughout his writing about dreams, after The interpretation of dreams, that is, to stress that dreams can be interpreted. For those working in a psychotherapeutic context these days, and especially from a psychoanalytic perspective, this emphasis on the interpretability of dreams might seem odd. It should be borne in mind that in the early 1900's interpreting neurotic symptoms in a thoroughgoing psychological way was considered novel and unusual enough, and so including dreams as part and parcel of clinical material was hardly unusual. Some of this attitude to dreams persists today, depending on particular cultural and historical views about dreams and what they might mean.

Freud was aware and respectful of the cultural meaning of dreams, but his abiding interest was in the psychological meaning of dreams. On this score he was totally opposed to “symbolic” and “decoding” methods of dream interpretation—those approaches that presume a simple, one-to-one relation between the dream image or symbol and what it means. This is typically the approach favoured by the books on dream interpretation that we often find in the “self-help” section of bookshops. For instance, going on a journey equals dying; a house equals the human body; abath equals birth; going upstairs equals having sex! One wonders what going down the stairs would symbolise!

Freud’s approach to dreams is a psychological interpretation based on the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious and the operations of repression. Freud has been criticised for what is seen as an overly sexualised interpretation of dream imagery, and often suggesting that the interpretations are somewhat forced and reductionistic. This is a complex issue that points to the relationship between the necessary generality of theory, and the equally necessary openness and idiosyncrasies of particular lives. In his general psychoanalytic theory the theory of sexuality is fundamental for Freud as it is one of the drives. So if sexuality is a central aspect of the human condition, and the human psyche, then it is not all that surprising that our dream images and symbols will (at times) be of a sexual nature. You don’t need to be a card-carrying Freudian to accept that there are sexual symbols in our lives, in our cultures, and in the history of society. Freud was quite clear, and this is evident in his case studies, that we cannot impose a symbolic interpretation onto a patient’s dream image. For instance, not all snakes in dreams are phallic symbols, and not all “dark receptacles” are symbols of vaginas. Freud did remind us that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! In other words, a dream interpretation can only proceed through a careful and quite precise engagement with the person’s associations to the various images, feelings, and parts of the dream.

Freud was very clear on this point concerning the dialogic basis of, and for, dream interpretation. In his Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (1915-1917) he makes the marvellously brilliant observation that it is “highly probable indeed, that the dreamer does know what his dream means: only he does not know that he knows it and for that reason thinks he does not know it”. On the surface this might strike us as a rather banal observation, and yet it holds the kernel of what is crucial to the process of interpretation as understood by psychoanalysis. What this means for us as psychotherapists is that our role is to help the person find the meaning to their dream. They hold the key to the dream’s meaning, not us, or our (psychoanalytic) theory, and this meaning is uncovered through the process of therapeutic engagement and dialogue, and encouraging the patient to associate freely to the dream: its images, its symbols, its feelings, its colours, and soon. And, furthermore, what this implies is that a dream can only be interpreted if the person wants it to be interpreted. The psychotherapist can’t interpret a dream against the patient’s will, or in the face of her active resistance!

Even though we can interpret a dream and say something interesting, and hopefully surprising, about the person, from their dream, this does not necessarily imply a coherent theory about the dream, the person’s symptoms, and their life as all being linked in some unambiguous way. However, I think it is useful to see what the dream affirms about the patient, their struggles, and what surprises there might be as the dream’s meaning gets unravelled through the interpretation.

There are at least two good reasons for interpreting dreams in psychotherapy. Firstly, because the person is not aware of what they “are hiding” in the various dream images and experiences, there tends to be a greater openness to the exploration of the repressed. In this sense, some novel ways of looking at familiar conflicts often emerge, as well as some unexpected insights into “old” problems—what I have called surprises (the therapeutic aha!). Secondly, dream images and symbols are usually very evocative and carry strong mnemonic properties. For instance, when we say in later sessions, “do you remember what we made of that image of your friend in a bright blue dress?”, as a link to something that the person is currently talking about or even struggling with, the connection to the (interpreted) dream brings forth resonances that often propel the working through of issues much more forcefully than without the help of the dream material.

Adam Phillips (1995) remarks that “A dream is enigmatic—it invites interpretation, intrigues us—because it has transformed something unacceptable, through what Freud calls the dream-work, into something puzzling.” I would contend that the notion of the dream-work is Freud’s major theoretical advance in theorising the meaning of dreams, and consequently a central adjunct to the practical interpretation of dreams. The dream as remembered, the dream that is recalled, in and through language—we tell somebody our dream, what Freud calls the “manifest content”—is mostly enigmatic, both to the dreamer and the dream interpreter. Thus, to find out what the surface or manifest content might mean, we have to interpret the dream. To state the obvious, the meaning of the dream is not evident from the surface content. Its psychological import lies elsewhere. This is not to suggest that the manifest content, the dream as told, is not important. On the contrary, it is by paying very close attention to the manifest dream account, and the person’s associations to all parts of the dream, that we get to another layer of meaning.

Freud’s assumption, following his general psychoanalytic account of symptom formation, is that the dream’s true import is disguised. He remarked that dreams function to preserve sleep. If we could immediately read off from the remembered dream, the manifest content, what the dream was telling us about our conflicts, our anxieties, and our desires, our sleep might be a lot more fitful, disturbed, and distressing. Even emotionally distressing dreams perplex us, as we might say on waking, “I dreamt I was afraid of diving into a swimming pool. This is absurd as I like swimming and I am a good swimmer”! So then, what is the anxiety in this dream pointing to if it seems in the context of our life “unconnected” to the content of diving into the swimming pool? And here, for me, is Freud’s breakthrough, as he assumes that some process of intrapsychic life must have produced the dream, and at the same time disguised its meaning. This view is in concert with his theory of neurosis where he states that symptoms function to protect the integrity of the ego, while at the same time alerting the person to something being amiss in their lives. As for dreams, symptom formation is produced through a complex process of intrapsychic dynamics.

Very early on (chapters III & IV)in his dream book Freud formulates the issue of the function of disguise in the following way: "a dream is the fulfilment of a wish", and then extends this by saying, "a dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish". This formulation has been the subject of much debate and controversy within psychoanalytic discussions, and certain psychoanalytic thinkers have not wanted to follow Freud on this specific instance, while still finding value in the other aspects of his dream theory. Be this as it may, what Freud is suggesting here by referring to the dream as the disguised fulfilment of a wish is that the dream, like the symptom, is a compromise formation of some underlying unconscious conflict (wish). Obviously we wouldn’t wish ourselves anxiety, as experienced in a scary dream for example, but “the wish” that is fulfilled is unconscious, and thus the disguised anxiety in the dream would need to be traced to what we are really anxious about. Freud argued that the emotion in the dream, the fear or anxiety attached to diving into the swimming pool for example, had been displaced from its source, what he called the latent content or dream thought, onto a part or image of the dream to which it didn’t “properly” belong. Through this displacement of affect, through this distortion of the meaning (of the fear of diving into a swimming pool), the disguise of (the meaning of) the dream is maintained.

In working backwards from the surface content of the dream to the latent content Freud was able to identify the operation of a number of processes that he referred to as the dream-work. Thus it is the dream-work that transforms the unconscious, mostly conflictual content, into the distorted and disguised, relatively logical and coherent narrative of the dream as experienced or dreamt. Freud identified a whole number of dream-work processes: displacement; condensation; censorship; overdetermination; secondary revision; symbolism; and representation. It is worth noting that these dream-work processes weren’t imposed by Freud as some brilliant theoretical idea, but derived from his practical psychoanalytic work of trying to make sense of why patients brought their dreams to therapy in the first place, and what they could possibly mean. For example, taking the dream-work process of condensation, if one gets a person to start associating to the various parts and images of the dream, and consequently a narrative develops of how this might link with other aspects of the person’s life, we immediately see that “the text” of the interpretation is much larger than the text of the recalled dream. In other words, the manifest dream is a significant condensation of what will emerge as we start to unravel the possible meanings of the dream.

An illustrative instance of condensation is the appearance of the “composite” figure or person in a dream. Many of us would have had the following experience: “I dreamt that the person was my friend John, and I was clear about this, but it didn’t look like him at all. In fact I didn’t recognise this ‘John person’ as anybody in my life, but it was definitely John. And in the dream he was dressed in pyjamas, and this didn’t seem odd at all even though we were in a public place”. In this composite image, or sometimes called collective image, of the person John a whole number of elements have become condensed: it is John; and yet it doesn’t look like John, and so also not John; the person looks like someone unknown to the dreamer; the wearing of pyjamas in public; the lack of concern of the oddity of this dress in public. Patients are frequently very confused by these composite images, and most often they are of people, but can also be of other things like places, houses, events, and so on. The condensed composite image clearly operates as a disguise, and from the John example it is easy to see that many associations could be elicited from the different aspects of the composite figure of John.

Having very briefly discussed only two of the dream-work processes (displacement and condensation), I hope that a sense of the possibilities of how one might go about interpreting a dream using a knowledge of each of the dream-work processes, is evident. In a sense, according to Freud, we have to “undo” the dream-work as a way, a method, of interpreting a dream. A major portion (the nearly 300 pages of chapter VI: The dream-work) of The interpretation of dreams is devoted to an examination of the processes of the dream-work, and by studying these we would be better informed of how to proceed in our work as psychotherapists as we interpret the dreams people bring to the sessions. I would like to conclude with a cautionary, and yet optimistic, comment from Adam Phillips (1995), who writes that the “dream, Freud implies, makes a mockery of its interpreters. But once another person listens to them, all sorts of things can happen; a psychoanalyst may be no more and no less than a person to whom one tells one’s dreams, a person one knows to be interested in such things.” Hopefully by being interested enough in our patients’ dreams to interpret them, all sorts of (therapeutic) things might start to happen.

Further reading.

I would strongly recommend Freud’s (1900/1991) The interpretation of dreams (Volume 4 Penguin Freud Library, London, Penguin Books), as still one of the most impressive accounts of the function of dreams in our unconscious lives, and as a guide to interpreting dreams in psychotherapy. As Freud’s magnum opus it “weighs in” at just under 800 pages! It is wonderfully written and cogently argued, and well worth the effort.

However, a shorter and somewhat more accessible account of the psychoanalysis of dreams in contained in Freud’s (1915- 1917/1991) Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (Volume 1 Penguin Freud Library, London, Penguin Books). The whole of Part II of this text is devoted to dreams—11 lectures in all—and because they were given to a general audience they show Freud making a case for dreams as legitimate and important material in the clinical work with neurotic patients.

Finally, Adams Phillips’ beautifully written brief essay entitled “Dreams” (in his 1995 text called Terrors and experts , London, Faber & Faber), is a excellent contemporary engagement with Freud’s work on dreams.

About the author

Grahame Hayes retired at the end of 2011 from the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in Durban, South Africa, after many years as a lecturer in Psychology. During this time he published in the area of psychoanalytic studies, which he continues to do. He has practised as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist for over 30 years. Grahame is also a founding editor, and the current managing editor of the South African journal PINS (Psychology in society).