Direct Interpretation of Dreams: Some Basic Principles and Technical Rules

The premise that the dream aims to communicate and not to disguise is a technical principle embraced by a large and eclectic group of analysts. These include Carl Jung (), Erich Fromm (1951), Walter Bonime (1962), and members of the existential school (Boss, 1963; Kelman, 1971). The central premise that dreams do not dissimulate is the foundation of the author's method of direct interpretation. The dream communicates through direct portraiture, metonymy, symbolism, metaphor, simile, and the full range of methods available to figurative speech. In this paper, some of the basic technical principles and rules that govern the translation of dream images into discursive knowledge by direct interpretation are described. Some of these rules have been implicit or explicit in earlier technical approaches, and some are new.

Together these rules have been applied to several hundred dreams of doctoral clinical students and patients. Recently, the method was evaluated in an exploratory study of 23 doctoral students and their dreams (van den Daele, 1991a). All students had at least six months of individual psychotherapy or psychoanalysis and one to seven years of clinical experience. Each student presented at least one dream during a semester-long seminar, without information about the age, history, life circumstances, or current issues of the dreamer at the time of the dream. At the time of its presentation, the author applied direct interpretation to each dream.

At the conclusion of the term or at follow-up, 23 students anonymously rated the author's blind interpretation of his or her dream for “accuracy and completeness” on a 5-point Likert scale. The majority of these dreams were the student's own dreams. In all, comparisons and evaluations were rendered for 18 dimensions that ranged from general comparisons of interpretive accuracy for past supervisors and therapists to specific characterizations