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Topics of Interest – Dream Interpretation: WAYS TO INTERPRET DREAMS by Fonya Lord Helm, Ph.D., ABPP Dream Images Freud (1900) started with the dream images themselves. He emphasized getting associations to the different images in the manifest content and, while he emphasized the wish, he understood that the most important recent event--the day residue--was integrated in the dream with memories from both the recent past and the distant past of childhood. Freud emphasized the recovery of memories in the form of wishes. Reiser (1997), however, states that Isakower said not to go "wish-hunting with the dream" but to emphasize gaining new historical information. Reiser and Isakower believe that unless new information is discovered, the dream has not been analyzed successfully. In order to use Isakower's technique, the analyst has to have "evenly hovering attention" to the patient's free associations. The analyst also has to be able to draw on his own inner images, especially his feelings during the session. The patient's memory networks have been encoded in the mind of the analyst throughout the analysis, making it relatively easy for the analyst to remember old dream images and historical events. Dream images are drawn both from the current life context and from images stored in memory that relate to past experiences. Dreams offer the opportunity to teach the patient about the match between the two as the new problems (the most affectively important day residue) resonate with past forgotten problems. Current problems are matched through imagery with unresolved problems from the past (Reiser, 1997: Winson, 1985). When a person is in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, the most important day residue is usually the therapeutic work and the therapist or analyst often will be a part of the dream, usually in the associations but often enough represented in the manifest content. The therapist may not look like herself, of course, but instead becomes part of a condensation. The hair color may be represented, for example. Objects from the office setting may be included. A creative project can also serve as the day residue. Freud's dreams were part of his creative process in writing his book Dream Interpretation, and Erikson even suggested that the Dream of Irma’s Injection might "carry the historical burden of being dreamed in order to be analyzed, and analyzed in order to fulfill a very special fate" (1954, p. 8). When the technique of free-associating to the dream images themselves to discover new memory/fantasies doesn't seem useful, the dreamer can use other approaches, such as focusing on the dream to discover different aspects of the self, self-states, and aspects of one's character that appear in relationships. This approach relies more heavily on the manifest content of the dream. Aspects of Character Dreams can offer a pictorial representation of an aspect of character that can be easier to grasp than if it pointed out by someone else (Goldberger, 1989). She gave an example of the dream of a Protestant minister, who was going to run a group and felt good about how he was doing it, when another minister came and said it was time for services. Associations to the dream indicated that he felt reluctant to be competitive with the analyst. The minister said that he was competent in group work, whereas the analyst was not, and suddenly he remembered another part of the dream. "Just before the other minister came and I was still involved with the group, someone was pushing me from one side. It was crowded, and it seemed as if it might somehow come to a confrontation. But I moved and walked all around to the other side and sat where there was plenty of room"(p. ). This dream gave Goldberger a chance to show him his characteristic defense that appeared in his physical activity in the dream: his circumstantiality. She writes: "His habitual defense--to go around the issue--which usually operated reflexively and silently, could vividly be brought to his awareness because he saw it dramatized in his overt behavior of going around the room in his dream"(p. ). She also notes the common dream phenomenon of representing oneself in two or more people. It may be most helpful to focus on what it is about the other person in the dream that seems so shameful or prohibited, and in that way discover what is frightening or unacceptable to oneself. Self States Self state dreams are a particular kind of dream that illustrates vividly the psychological situation of the dreamer. The sense of self is depicted metaphorically. Ella Freeman Sharpe (1937) gives an example of a dream of a professional woman who was experiencing lassitude and lack of interest in her work. The dream was: "I took up my watch to look at the time and found the face of the watch so covered over with strips of paper that I could not see what the time was"(p. ). Soon after this dream, the woman experienced a week's insomnia, took a leave of absence from work and began psychoanalysis. During her analysis, after she had improved, she had another dream: "I wanted to see what time it was and turned to look at my watch and it was not there. I then remembered I had put it on a shelf. I took it down and the face was quite clear so I could read the time"(p. ). Her psychological state was much improved. Kohut (1971) is well known naming the self state dream, a particular kind of dream that illustrates vividly the psychological situation of the dreamer. Kohut’s experience was that this kind of dream has no associations. Ornstein (1987) describes a patient’s self state dream: "Inside a rickety house or structure--of corrugated iron. There was a ladder in the middle--wobbly; it looked like it would soon collapse, too, just like the house or structure"(p. ). In his associations, the patient stated that he lived emotionally in a rickety house that was about to collapse, and that the house represented himself, the way he felt, and the way he had always felt. Ornstein believed that the dream portrayed a fear of internal collapse, as well as an attempt to ward off collapse by not using the wobbly ladder. Ornstein stated that no other associations were available, except for the larger clinical-therapeutic context, which was an up-coming interruption of the analysis. This interruption was triggering the patient's feeling of potential severe disorganization. Some analysts would consider the patient’s associations to the upcoming interruption of the treatment to be very, rather than minimally, important, and those analysts would emphasize the transference interpretation concerning the effect of separation from the analyst and the interruption of the analytic work. Analysts interested in attachment theory would pay particular attention to such interruptions and separations. Reluctance to Know More About the Inner Life Gray’s (1992) work on the patient’s indicators of discomfort with increasingly direct expression of aggression or sexual material, illustrates how the dream appears as part of the analytic process. Gray points out that where the dream appears in the hour is very important, because it indicates a move away from conflictual material that is expressing aggression or sexual material more directly, even though it may continue the same theme. Here the memory and telling of the dream functions as a way of expressing such reluctance. Often, as the work progresses, a dream is told when the patient formerly would have felt sleepy or used another less communicative defense like falling silent. Telling the dream in the hour is an example of the use of the context of the past because it displaces the analytic focus away from the present situation in the session, what is happening in the here and now transference, to a different time and place. Gray (1992) gives an example of a patient who was speaking about his mother in a critical way, with his voice becoming angrier, who suddenly became quieter, and began to tell a dream. In the dream, he had on a black robe, like a judge, and people were listening to him. Then he was in a white robe, feeling embarrassed because he hadn’t shaved, and the crowd got restless, and was muttering against him. His mother was in the crowd and it looked as though she might be crushed. Gray uses the manifest content to begin, saying that in the description of the dream, the patient picked up on the problem he was up against just before telling the dream. When the patient agreed and remembered speaking about his mother, Gray said that he sounded as if he had been hesitant to speak critically about his mother, and then the dream interrupted. When the patient remembered that, Gray said that maybe it had become unsafe to show him the critical feeling about his mother. After the patient then said that he did not want to seem unfair to his mother, Gray used the manifest content again, saying that in his memory of the dream the patient first pictured himself as a judge, but then took that away by making a white-robed unshaven figure of himself. Gray shows the patient his reluctance in a very palatable way, first by telling the patient that his reporting of the dream continues the theme of the hour before telling him that the report of the dream interrupted critical thoughts of his mother. Gray makes sure that the patient is working with him in a conscious way before he interprets the resistance to continuing with critical thoughts about the mother. This kind of approach is more positive than many interpretations of the reluctance to discover more about one’s aggression and sexual ideas. Such interventions are usually heard as critical. It is necessary to be particularly careful with interventions that show the telling of the dream as expressing reluctance, because when these interventions are heard as too critical, the patient will report fewer dreams. References: Breger, L, Hunter, I. & Lane, R.W. (1971). The Effect of Stress on Dreams. New York: International Universities Freud, S. (1895). Studies on Hysteria. The Case of Frau Emmy von N. Standard Edition, 2: 48-105. ----- (1908). Letter to K. Abraham. In A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Gais, S., Plihal, W., Wagner, U., & Born, J. (2000). Early sleep triggers memory for early visual discrimination skills. Goldberger, M. 1989). On the analysis of defenses in dreams. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 58: 396-418. Gray, P. (1992). Memory as resistance, and the telling of a dream. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self. New York: International Universities Press. Ornstein, P.H. (1987). On self-state dreams in the psychoanalytic treatment process. In A. Rothstein, ed., The Reiser, M. (1997). The art and science of dream interpretation: Isakower revisited. Journal of the American Sharpe, E.F. (1937). Dream Analysis. London: Hogarth Press. Reprint, New York: Brunner/Mazel, (1978). Winson, J. (1986). Brain and Psyche. New York: Vintage Books. |
