5. Interpretation of Dreams

Ever since Freud's seminal study, the interpretation of dreams has been the most popular area of psychoanalytic theory and technique. The analyst's interpretations of dreams are as dependent on his conception of the function of dreaming as they are on his theory of the genesis of the dream and on the modification of the dream up to the moment of the manifest dream report. What dreams a patient remembers, the way in which he relates them, and the point at which he relates them in the particular session and in the framework of the analysis as a whole are all factors contributing to the interpretation. Not least, both the interest in dreams and the (sometimes more, sometimes less productive) way they are dealt with during treatment are critical for the interpretation of the dreams themselves and for the conduct of treatment in general.

In this introductory section we must briefly outline the most important findings of experimental dream research, even though doing so makes interpreting dreams appear more problematic than before. Freud's view that dreams are the guardian of sleep must now be regarded as disproved; on the contrary, sleep is the guardian of dreams (Wolman 1979, p. VII). This is one of the fundamental conclusions which must be drawn from the many psychobiological investigations of dream and sleep. The nature of the REM phases of sleep and their specific biological and psychological functions are nevertheless still a source of scientific controversy. H. Gill's (1982) description of REM phases as a third form of mental existence underlines once more the importance of Freud's basic approach, i.e., that dreams should be seen as a via regia to hidden aspects of human existence.

Two questions are central to current empirical dream research: one concerns the psychic function of dreams, the other, the affective cognitive processes of dream genesis (Strauch 1981). After the discovery of REM sleep, dream research aimed at establishing relationships bet