Dreams took on a new meaning when dreaming for psychoanalysis became an area of study. Therefore, in today's post we will explain a little more about what dreaming means within psychoanalysis.

Psychoanalysis

In 1900, Sigmund Freud published "The Interpretation of Dreams", a book that is considered to be one of the landmarks of the beginning of psychoanalysis. Freud's theory about dreams still attracts many scholars from various fields of human knowledge. The mysterious and rich universe of dreams can reveal more about us than we can imagine.

Before Freud's theories, dreams were usually interpreted as premonitions or as mere symbols. After Freud's theories and the interpretation of dream for psychoanalysis Thus, for psychoanalysis, one of the main purposes of dreams is to highlight the importance that what we dream may have in our lives.

In addition, dreams can exert influence on our thoughts or attitudes. Furthermore, dreams for psychoanalysis can also be very useful from a therapeutic point of view, since their analysis, in therapy, can help the psychoanalyst during the treatment process. Therefore, it is very important for the psychoanalyst or psychologist to understand the formation of dreams and how theirdefense mechanisms and what are the principles of their interpretation.

Freud and dreams

Freud was already working with dream analysis when he began to realize that unconscious desire could manifest itself in dreams. He noticed this with increasing frequency in his patients and also saw this in the self-analysis he performed between 1896 and 1899. Thus, Freud saw that the unconscious manifested itself in dreams through childhood memories.

Through this analysis, Freud began to understand the importance of dreams for psychoanalysis, a science that was just beginning to emerge. He gradually concluded that the adult's unconscious was formed by the child still present inside each individual, and he saw that this occurred regardless of his or her age. This child, according to his theory, could reveal itself in several ways:

• for the love of his mother;
• by rivalry with his father;
• due to fear of castration;
• among other ways.

Free Membership

Freud thus began to use the Free Association technique, which would become one of the main characteristics of psychoanalysis. Freud abandoned the therapy he then practiced, which was carried out by means of hypnosis. After his self-analysis, he began to use dreams as his main working material.

He realized that, many times, just like his patients, he also showed a certain resistance to treatment. And he realized that his progress was also slow and difficult. During the last phase of his auto-analysis that Freud started writing "The Interpretation of Dreams", his new theory about dreams emerges, as well as the main characteristics of this new science, theAnd they arise, mainly, from Freud's struggle for self-understanding.

Freud discovers the child's secret passion for the mother, which cannot remain innocent, which is linked to sexual development. The fear of the father, seen as a rival, which leads Freud to the famous Oedipus complex.

The dream for psychoanalysis

After a long day at work, there is nothing like a good night's dream to relax and switch off from the day-to-day routine. For many of us, dreams may not have any meaning, but for psychoanalysis, dreams can reveal desires and traumas or other elements present in our unconscious.in an easy way.

In the book "The Interpretation of Dreams" Freud states that dreams are the fulfillment of a desire. These are hidden desires, desires that, many times, we do not fulfill due to social impositions. Impositions such as:

• the customs;
• the culture;
• or education from where we live;
• religion;
• the taboos ;
• the social morals.

This is because when we sleep our mind relaxes and the unconscious has more autonomy in relation to our conscious.

For psychoanalysis, dreams are an escape valve for our most hidden and secret desires, desires that our conscience judges as forbidden to be fulfilled, due to what society imposes on us, according to our culture. For Freud, dreams are the main way to know the aspects and characteristics of our psychic life.

Methods

According to Freud and psychoanalysis, it was necessary to find unique methods to understand the real meaning of dreams. This method had as its main basis the analysis of the patient, which took place through dialogue between the psychoanalyst and the patient. For him, dreams revealed recalcitrant unconscious desires and childish material, and indicated a relationship with something of a sexual nature.Therefore, dream interpretation was of great importance for psychoanalytic theory.

The dream and its mechanisms

For psychoanalysis, dreams have a manifest and latent content. What Freud called sleep work, for him, there were four types of dream mechanisms: condensation, displacement, dramatization and symbolization. Thus, through these mechanisms dreams were transformed into manifest, which should be interpreted.

Condensation

It is the laconism of the dream in relation to the oneiric thoughts that are in it. That is, dreams are often summaries or clues to desires and events. And so they need to be unraveled, to be deciphered.

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Displacement

The displacement is when the individual, in the dream, moves away from his object of real value, diverting his affective charge to another object. Thus, the secondary object is, apparently, insignificant.

The dramatization

It is the imagination of our mind. In other words, when we dream we leave reason aside, reason that is present when we are awake. Thus, we can imagine everything that we rationalize during the day.

Symbolization

Symbolization is when the images present in the dream have a relationship with other images, that is, when the individual dreams of some object that appears masked in the dream, which has to do with something that the person has lived or desired.

Final considerations about dreams for psychoanalysis

These are some considerations of what dreams mean for psychoanalysis. You can go even deeper into the subject by registering for our online course on Clinical Psychoanalysis. The price is affordable and you can access it from wherever you are, so hurry up and register now!