Dreams, Memories and Trauma – A Search for Transformations in Psychoanalyses

This article reports on decades of efforts to understand changes in manifest dreams in psychodynamic therapies as indicators for relevant, sustaining transformations in the inner object world of patients and to use them in comparative psychotherapy outcome studies. An empirical psychotherapy study by Leuzinger-Bohleber has described changes in manifest dream during successful psychoanalyzes: reduction of nightmares, widening of the affective spectrum, increase of successful problem-solving, fewer observer dreams and more mature object relations. In this paper, we deepen our conceptual understanding of this empirical finding by referring to recent studies and findings on dreams as memory reconsolidation and then linking the insights gained to the dream generation model of Ulrich Moser, Ilka von Zeppelin and Vera Hortig. We postulate that the above-mentioned changes in the manifest dream content of successful psychoanalyzes are related to “successful therapeutic working through” of newly understood memories of traumatic experiences. By applying the ZDPCS of Moser et al. to dreams of an analysand from the LAC study we will illustrate, systematically analyze and discuss possible changes in the manifest dreams as indicators for sustaining transformations in the analysand’s inner object world.