In this paper we explore the management of psychic pain through dreaming. We describe how palliative functions, whether employed in waking or sleeping life, provide means of removing, concealing, and regulating pain, while not addressing or healing the conditions that create and sustain pain. We concern ourselves here less with the sources of pain, whether internally or externally derived, than with the organization of experience in relationship to pain, as well as the ways organizations of experience may also create and intensify pain (Joseph, 1981; Ogden, 1989). We are interested in how dreaming can function as a palliate for psychic pain, when neither the conditions of living or internal structures are favorable for healing and resolution. Dreaming can also function as an identifier of psychic pain that has been avoided in waking life through analgesic living. The oscillation between psychic organizations as a means of maintaining psychic equilibrium in the presence of pain is explored. Throughout the paper, we present representative clinical dream samples to demonstrate the palliative functions of dreams, as well as the dreaming consequences of analgesic living.