Certain dreams are particularly striking for the way they represent themselves and the manner in which they are told within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Within such a dream is contained a picture of the dream's function and significance as part of the transaction between patient and psychotherapist. This phenomenon illustrates the nature and function of unconscious phantasy, the relations that hold between phantasy and mechanisms of defence, and the manifestations of phantasy within the transference.

Three examples are given of self-representing dreams which have been reported and re-enacted by trainee psychiatrists in psychotherapy supervision.