In our latest CPD webinar series, we invited four speakers to discuss working with dreams in psychotherapy, from different theoretical perspectives. We hoped to offer an introduction to therapists who have not had specific training on dreamwork and may feel unsure of how to work with clients’ dreams in the consulting room. All events resulted in a lively discussion with participants, which is what we aim to offer through all our CPD – a space to share ideas and learn experientially. In this blog post, we share insights from each of the four events.

An integrative perspective with Gerhard Payrhuber

In the first event, Gerhard drew from a rich cultural knowledge of dreams, in psychotherapy and beyond, including for example how Shakespeare’s The Tempest is all about dreams. Gerhard focused on an experiential and phenomenological approach to working with dreams in psychotherapy. Dreams can be understood as a ‘fundamental affective activity’ of the human psyche. In the consulting room, if a dream is given space to breathe, a therapist can collaboratively join a dreamer in their sense-making and contextualisation of the dream in their lives. Working with dreams can therefore offer a shared journey between client and therapist, and a way to contact the private, intimate and internal realm of the dreamer.

A Freudian approach with Luca Bosetti

In his presentation, Luca challenged the misconception that Freudian analysis focuses on the analyst’s ‘interpretation’ or meaning making of a dream without input from a patient. He illuminated how Freud’s (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams focused on Freud’s analysis of his own dreams, in a sort of personal dream diary, rather than his interpretation of patients’.

Luca outlined three cornerstones of Freud’s approach, which provide a helpful blueprint for thinking about a dream clinically with a patient:

1. The technique of free association – allowing a patient to talk freely and make links or connections between thoughts that might otherwise remain hidden, including repressed memories and emotions.
2. The idea of dream components – including:
   1. manifest content – the thoughts, emotions and events consciously recalled in the dream
   2. latent content – unconscious or hidden meaning behind the manifest content
   3. navel of the dream – the core of the dream’s unconscious meaning
   4. daily residue – the experiences of the waking day that are incorporated into a dream.
3. The idea of dream functions – including wish fulfilment and self-deception, adaptation and synthesis, creation and problem solving, opening to the new and change, defence and resistance.

A Jungian approach with Julian Masters

Julian offered a contrast between Freudian and Jungian perspectives on dreams. While for Freud dreams reveal hidden or unconscious feelings and wishes which can be brought to the surface and known through analysis, for Jung the symbols and images of dreams offer a bridge to what is not yet known and what is unknowable. Jung’s methods for working with and understanding dreams included:

1. Teleology – Jung believed dreams pave the way for life, and give clues about where life is going, including obstructions to future possibilities. Dreams work at this anyway, irrespective of interpretation.
2. Amplification – a technique in clinical practice where therapist and client together walk around the images and symbols (more than the language) in a dream and explore these in relation to the dreamer’s life.
3. Compensation – to regulate or balance a one-sided conscious attitude.
4. Dream Series – to understand what unfolds in a sequence, tracking themes across time. This can be understood as part of a process of ‘individuation’ – a slow imperceptible process of psychic growth, another key concept in Jungian psychology.

A Relational Psychoanalytic approach with Alicia McDougall

Alicia focused on the intersubjective aspects of exploring dreams therapeutically and how through dialogue dreams offer a gateway to understanding a client’s intrapsychic experience. Alicia led the group through the analysis of two client dream vignettes and it was fascinating to watch different associations emerge within the group, which paralleled some of the original meaning-making between client and therapist. Alicia also shared her useful framework for working through a dream relationally with a client to help translate her thinking in practice:

1. Make it a conversation (two-person psychology)
2. Write down key points (function of the intersubjective space)
3. Be curious about the key points (make associations)
4. Work together to identify themes
5. Co-create a story that fits the client’s experience.