Tradition and renewal in the interpretation of dreams

Tradition and renewal in the interpretation of dreams. - The relationship between theory and practice in psychoanalysis is still a controversial issue. This can be graphically exemplified by comparing the theory of dream functions and the theory behind Freud's interpretation of dreams, on the one hand, and the changes that have taken place over the past 100 years in the way psychoanalysts have interpreted dreams in clinical practice. At a very early stage, psychoanalysts attributed a significance to the interpretation of manifest dreams that Freud's theory had ruled out. Many books and articles over the past 50 years indicate that for many practicing psychoanalysts the dream narrated by the analysand, i.e. the so-called manifest content, is the "real" or "true" dream. For all that, Freud's dream theory still goes largely unchallenged. The author demonstrates that, in terms of the function accorded to dreaming, representatives of different psychoanalytic currents in the second half of the 20th century concurred in regarding the manifest dream as the "true" dream. This incipient theory supports the practice of seeing dreaming as a primary and genuine product calling not so much for interpretation as for a joint process of translation and subjective integration by the patient and the analyst in which meanings are created that have never before existed in the psyche of the patient.