Psychotherapeutic work with dreams (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Psychology - Consulting and Therapy, grade: 2,3, International Psychoanalytic University, language: English, abstract: Since the beginning of mankind, dreams have been a fascinating and mysterious occurrence. Even for some significant scientists, dreams played an important role in their discoveries. As for the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, who was working on classifying the elements according to their chemical characteristics in 1869 and "saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required". After he woke up he wrote his dream down hence creating the periodic system. Mendeleev's case is not the only one known; reportedly many dreams helped to provide inventions or at least gave them a final touch. Men always tried and still are trying to construct theories of why we dream and what those dreams mean. In ancient times, people believed that dreams were messages transmitted from their gods.

Not only do dreams occur in human beings, but it is also assumed that animals dream, which brings up the question in what way they might be beneficial and necessary. Revonsuo (2000) hypothesizes that dreams simulate threatening events in order to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance which leads to a better dealing with dangers in waking life and therefore increases the probability of reproduction. Furthermore, it has been discovered that dreams are an accompaniment of rapid eye movement (REM) and changes of EEG waves in the brain. The content of dreams varies from dreamer to dreamer but there is a consistent structure that can mostly be seen in every dream. It resembles the structure of a drama composed of four segments: exposition, development of plot, culmination and resolution.

Dreams do not only process the most relevant daily experiences and encounters, but most importantly they depict an emotional, meaningful, mostly colorful, tense and symbolic situation. They are not only perceived in a visual way but rather all senses are intact in the dream world, while the dreamers body itself is paralyzed. As it can be seen, dreams cover a wide range. They have gained popularity in psychology when Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, worked with them in his psychotherapies.