This paper examines the relation between dream theory and the technique of dream interpretation. The author summarizes the main Freudian theory of dream formation, where the manifest content represents rather a distortion of unconscious material, and discusses its technical consequences, the so-called 'classical' technique of dream interpretation. He examines the alternative position of the dream as self-representation, and its technical implications. Finally, he analyses Matte-Blanco's idea of the unconscious as a structure, as a set of 'rules' with 'special characteristics', that can be manifested as violations of the fundamental rules of ordinary logic. According to this conception, the manifest dream content is no longer a mere distortion, but an attempt—through a space metaphor implying movement—of the representative thought to unfold the unconscious reality in terms of three-dimensional perceptive space and Aristotelian logic. By means of clinical material, the author discusses some technical implications of this conception.