Since the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams there have been very few efforts from within psychoanalysis to critically examine the value of Freud's dream theory. In this paper, I study the two major attempts to do so—those of Spence and Grünbaum. In pointing to the limitations of these critiques, I show that both authors set unduly severe requirements for the justification of the theory. One major problem is their neglect of holistic approaches to justification, as opposed to atomistic ones. Because the apparent absence of justification has had a latent effect on clinical practice, the implications of this study are not only theoretical, but clinical as well.