Problems of Dream Interpretation

The following reflections were stimulated by a recurring experience which comes one's way in talking to colleagues: although analysts often discuss dreams, they rarely agree about the interpretation of them. I would stress that this remains true even among experienced members of the same “school”. In that there are also different “schools” of interpretation, the observation becomes even more significant.

It follows that neither inadequate training nor lack of experience is a sufficient ground for explaining the divergences. It therefore becomes necessary to face the fact that one and the same dream may be subjected to diametrically opposite interpretations.

The situation poses two questions. The first is practical: Must a dream be interpreted correctly—must it indeed be interpreted at all, if the patient is to be helped? The second question is theoretical: Are there any objective criteria for assessing the correctness of a dream interpretation; if so, what are they?

It would appear that the problem may be expressed cogently by referring to an example from Jung's writings. In his “Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious”, he described the case of a young woman patient—a student of philosophy—whose massive father transference defied all attempts at analysis. Although it was clear from the context that the patient “knew” exactly what was happening in reductive terms, she was nevertheless unable to extricate herself from the analytical relationship. The dreams seemed to express this impasse by making the analyst seem increasingly larger than life until the situation eventually became untenable: the therapist had come to the end of his tether and the patient had run out of funds. Jung had no option but to acknowledge his impotence and passively to await developments. At that exact moment something happened: an old relationship between the patient and a young man began to grow steadily, and she slipped out of her transference and into life (Jung, 1928; C.W.