Effectiveness of DA

• STRENGTH

  P: Evidence supports the effectiveness in treating mental disorders such as depression

  E: Matt and Navarro reviewed 63 meta analysis on the effect of psychotherapy, found that on average 75% of clients receiving dream analysis showed improvements in issue they were having

  E: Suggests its an effective form of therapy for common mental health issues such as depression
• STRENGTH

  P: Evidence supports the effectiveness in helping people improve their self-esteem + gain insight into their mind

  E: Falk and Hill compared 22 separated + divorced women in 8 week dream interpretation groups to 12 women in control (in terms of anxiety, depression, coping, self-esteem and insight into dreams), results showed women who ppt in dream interpretation groups had improvements to self-esteem and insight

  E: This suggests that the therapy is effective at helping individuals adjusting to significant life changes
• WEAKNESS

  P: It is based on unfalsifiable concepts and subjective interpretations

  E: Freud did not support dream dictionaries as each interpretation needed to be made in the context of individual context/situation, therefore interpretations are based on objective judgement of each therapist

  E: Means it’s difficult to scientifically demonstrate that it is interpretation of a dream that leads to the effective treatment, one therapist may offer different interpretations
• STRENGTH

  P: Addresses long term underlying cause of psychological problems

  E: Therapy works on uncovering repressed unconscious desires/conflicts that may have occurred in early childhood, bringing them to the surface + confronting them should result in long term end

  E: Compared to other therapies, e.g. drug therapy which only treat the symptoms
• Conclusion for effectiveness

  • If it does treat the root cause of a disorder effectively it should avoid problems such as the ‘revolving door’ where people have to keep returning for therapy as their symptoms reoccur
  • Not commonly used therapy today and it is less widely available, partially on the NHS, individuals more likely to receive other therapies such as CBT
  • There is evidence to show that it is effective, however much of the evidence is unscientific