Therapy

• What is the therapy of the psychodynamic approach?

  Dream analysis
• Psychodynamic therapies work by…

  Talking about negative emotions and memories, bringing them into the conscious. This enables you to feel better afterwards, known as catharsis.

  Bringing unconscious thoughts and feelings to the conscious, enabling them to be dealt with, therefore offering insight into your behaviour.
• What are the aims of dream analysis?

  To reveal the unconscious and bring it to the conscious.

  To uncover the latent content of a dream by examining the manifest content.

  To offer insights that allow psychological issues to be resolved.
• What are the main components of dream analysis?


  Dreams as wish fulfilment

  The symbolic nature of dreams

  Dreamwork

  The role of the therapist

  Dream diary
• Dreams as wish fulfilment

  Freud believed that all dreams were the unconscious fulfilment of wishes that could not be satisfied in the conscious mind. Dreams protect the sleeper and allow some expression of the buried urges and desires.
• The symbolic nature of dreams

  Dreams represent unfulfilled wishes and desires but the content is expressed symbolically so they don’t cause anxiety or stress.

  Manifest content - what happened in the dream.

  Latent content - hidden meaning of the dream uncovered by the therapist.
• Dreamwork

  The latent content is transformed into manifest content through dreamwork.

  Dreamwork process:

  Condensation- one image represents many ideas.

  Displacement

  Symbolism

  Secondary elaboration- the actual dream material could be of a recent event disguising the latent content further.
• The role of the therapist

  To reverse the dreamwork process.

  The therapist will provide various interpretations and the client will pick one.
• Dream diary


  Describes the dream, including thoughts, memories and associations that come to mind in relation to the dream.
• Effectiveness of dream analysis

  Relies on the subjective interpretations of the therapist.

  Relies on the client’s memory.
• Ethics of dream analysis 


  Balance of therapist-client relationship - potential power imbalance between them. Over-reliance.

  Toon et al (1996) - therapists may induce false memories so therapy takes longer, leading to financial gain.

  Emotional harm - client may be guided towards an emotionally distressing insight.