Approach on therapy

• Unconscious Mind

  One way the mind expresses itself is through dreams, Freud classed dreams as the ‘royal road to the unconscious’ and argued the threatening nature of our unconscious thoughts is disguised in dreams. Dream Analysis aims to make the unconscious, conscious through decoding the manifest content (the dream) of the dream to reveal the contents of the unconscious mind (the latent content). The therapist aims to establish if the roots cause the psychological problems is due to repressed issues, therefore expose and cure.
• Influence of childhood experiences

  Suggested that traumatic experiences would be repressed into the unconscious mind as they are too painful to deal with, however these childhood ordeals would still be troubling and would resurface through dreams (as a way of trying to work through past events). Dream Analysis aims to uncover the hidden meaning in order to reveal then confront the repressed trauma that were the cause.
• Tripartite Personality

  Thought that the demands and desires of the id (which are unacceptable in waking hours) are active in our dreams, dreams are a way of acting out our desires/wishes in more acceptable way. This happens while we sleep during a process knows a ‘dreamwork’. It is a form of an ego defence mechanism as our ego is trying to protect us from the undesirable truth of what lurks in our unconscious. Dream Analysis aims to reverse the dreamwork process