Dreamwork Techniques

“Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.” This quote from Sigmund Freud illustrates how the content of our dreams can reveal our emotions, identities, and values. Although Freud is credited with the development of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation, utilizing dreamwork as a therapeutic tool has expanded far beyond Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. There are a plethora of dreamwork techniques including discovering one’s dream language and utilizing expressive arts dream bridging to further aid in meaning-making and deeper exploration of the unconscious mind.

Dream Functions

Throughout time and across cultures, dreams have been utilized as a way for people to understand themselves and the world around them better. Freud proposed that dreams offered psychological insight into a person’s unconscious desires, conflicts, and motivations that may otherwise be repressed during waking life. Freud believed the manifest content of dreams, or what we remember upon waking, reflects the latent content, or hidden psychological meaning. Freud utilized the technique of free association in order to uncover and decipher latent dream content. Freud also theorized that the unconscious mind uses mechanisms such as displacement (transfering the significance from something important to something less important), condensation (combining several ideas into one symbol), and symbolization (repressed idea of wish manifesting through symbols) to create distance from the true meaning of the dream. In more modern dreamwork, however, dreams are thought to have four core functions: memory consolidation, problem solving, emotional processing, and future planning.

Dreamwork Techniques

There are a plethora of dreamwork techniques utilized for both group dream sharing practices in various cultures as well as individual dream exploration. The somatic dream exercise involves identifying emotions felt in the body during the dream, when the dreamer recalls experiencing that emotion in waking life, and connecting any resemblance, patterns, or lessons shared between the dream experience and the waking experience. Frederick Fritz Perls suggested that enacting one’s dream using Gestalt dreamwork enables an individual to integrate alienated parts of one’s self in order to become more whole. Gayle Delaney’s dream interview process involves the dreamer describing the dream as if they are trying to explain it to an alien from another planet, supplying definitions for significant elements of the dream which will often reveal the dreamer’s associations and unlock latent meanings. The dream interviewer will then recapitulate the dream to the dreamer and then, together, create dream bridges that connect aspects of the dreamer’s dream life with their waking life to test the strengths of the metaphors and symbols. Two significant group dream sharing methods are the Senoi-inspired dream group and the Ullman method, which both allow for members of the dream group to project their own interpretations of the dream symbols by listening to the dream as if it were their own. Dreambridging and utilizing dream-arts involves transforming an aspect of the dream into a creative form of expression, which can further deepen the process and highlight even more symbols from our subconscious.

There are a myriad of ways to utilize one’s dream world in order to learn more about yourself and what you value, how you interact with the world around you, and even improve your mental health and wellbeing. If you are interested in connecting with your dream language, consider dream journaling, improving sleep hygiene, and working with a therapist who specializes in dreamwork. Reach out to Embrace Therapy today for more information, resources, and support.