Freud's (1900/1953a) magnum opus, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” largely based on the self-analysis of his own dreams, incorporated a wide variety of source material. Concerned about exposure and discretion, he nevertheless published his dreams with many personal associations and revelations. Despite the self-analytic, research, and educational value of his written dreams, Freud paradoxically devalued written dreams in clinical psychoanalysis. Written dreams can be preserved, collected, compared, and reexamined. Writing dreams protects against forgetting the dream with its unconscious representations. Written dreams of patients are not simply resistance or enactments, but analytic communications with transference-countertransference significance. A clinical vignette exemplifies use of the written dream in attempted ego mastery of unconscious trauma and conflict.