The Dream as a Picture of the Psychoanalytic Process

“The dream as a picture of the process” gives an overview of the work that has been done during the psychoanalytic process. The dream is going to play a crucial role in the therapy or in the analysis. Its lucidity and transparency are characteristic. Although the patient doesn't stress the importance of the dream during the session, he/she remembers them clearly and also later in the analysis or after termination, he/she doesn't forget this central dream. This kind of dream has a special impact on the analyst. Although this type of dream may occur during every analytic process, it emerges frequently during psychotherapies with traumatized people or with people who suffer unresolved mourning. The author uses clinical material from his own work. The thawing of a frozen inner world is illuminated by a dream and linked to a shift in the countertransference. The second dream illustrates the mechanisation of an analysis. The last case demonstrates how changes in the process are portrayed by elaborations of the first analytic dream. In one of the dreams there is a visual representation of the unconscious comprehension of the analytic process. The other dream is a picture of the expansion of the inner space.