AO1 - Components of DA

• Dream diary 

  • Between therapy sessions
  • Client records dreams on waking
  • Manifest content of the dream is often forgotten as we get into the day
  • Dream diary near bed to record whilst it is in their memory
  • Manifest content which is recorded can be used as basis for discussion in sessions
• Dream as wish fulfilment

  • Freud believed that dreams were the unconscious fulfilment of wishes that could not be satisfied in the conscious mind because they are unacceptable 
  • Desires of the id or repressed trauma
  • Dreams therefore protect the sleeper by stopping these desires from building to unacceptable level
  • Threaten their sanity (anxiety/depression)
  • Dreams allow us to live out these desires and fantasies in a more acceptable way
  • Repression of these true desires is seen to be a source behavioural disorders
  • Therapy aims to interpret dreams to uncover the true wishes they represent
• Symbolic nature of dreams

  • Further protection through our dreams appearing in a disguised form
  • Therapy works on the principle that what the dreamer recalls is symbolic representation of the truth buried in unconscious
  • Symbols of male genitalia = snakes
  • Symbols of female genitalia = caves
  • Freud proposed 2 types of content;
  • Latent content = hidden meaning
  • Manifest content = dream itself/how its symbolised 
  • Process of changing latent into manifest is ‘dreamwork’ (type of defence mechanism
  • One example is displacement where emotional significance is separated and attaches to different one
• Role of therapist

  • To reverse the dreamwork process by decoding manifest into latent content
  • Freud emphasises only trained psychoanalysts should do this as interpretations need to be in the context of clients life
  • Freud did not support the use of a dream dictionary
  • Sometimes the manifest content does not actually represent some latent contents 
  • Free association is where client verbalises all thoughts that come to mind without consciously thinking
  • Idea is that they might allows things to slip the preconscious to conscious 
  • Able to reveal the truth behind what the symbols represent