Dream Analysis- psychodynamic treatment

Dream Analysis (psychodynamic treatment)

This approach sees mental disorders as coming from the unconscious mind, usually due to repressed thoughts or emotions from childhood. In order to treat the disorder, the analyst must therefore acess the patient's unconscious mind. One way of doing this is through dream analysis. When we sleep, our ego's defences are more relaxed, so material that usually stays in our unconscious enters our conscious in the form of a dream. 

However, because the material is still threatening to our peace of mind, it cannot be allowed into our conscios in its actual form. The material is disguised, and symbols in dreams represent the real content of the dream. The content of the dream that we remember is the manifest content and the actual meaning of the content is the latent content.

It is the analyst's job to uncover the true meaning of a patient's dream. this can take some time as the analyst needs a number of recorded dreams rather than just one. One way to analyse the dream is via free association where the patient talks about the thoughts and emotions…