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Aim: The aim of this research study was to investigate the role of children's dreams in the practice of child psychoanalysis today, and to explore contemporary psychoanalytic understanding of children's dreams. Methodology: This pilot study consisted of two stages. The first involved a document analysis of published articles in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, making a comparison between those of the early 1950s and the 1990s, in order to see in what way the discourse around children's dreams within the psychoanalytic literature has changed over time. The second stage, based on questionnaires and in-depth interviews, attempted to understand in more detail the way contemporary child analysts, working in the Anna Freudian tradition, think about dreams and use them in their clinical practice. Results: Results suggest that there has been a decreased focus on dreams in a clinical context over time, and that this may partly be a consequence of changing theoretical models and changes in training. When work with dreams does take place, it appears that child analysts have
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 61, ed. Robert A. King, Peter B. Neubauer, Samuel Abrams, and A. Scott Dowling (Yale University Press, copyright © 2006 by Robert A. King, Peter B. Neubauer, Samuel Abrams, and A. Scott Dowling).
various different theoretical models of dreaming; and there is a variety of techniques for handling children's dreams in psychoanalytic practice today.