Dream Work
In my experience as a therapist, dreams are extremely useful and helpful in bringing about deep understanding and change. While psychotherapy can go on without dream work, I often encourage patients to pay attention to their dreams and write them down before even getting up from bed in the morning. Once the day begins, dreams are usually quickly lost to conscious tasks and experiences.
Maybe you have heard that dreams are produced by random brain cells firing during the night, and that dreams have no real meaning. This is far from true, and work with dreams is in fact very meaningful. Freud was the first to look at dreams systematically to derive the meaning hidden in various ways in the dream content. Since Freud, many very bright analysts have contributed to the understanding of dreams and how they reveal what is close to our consciousness, but not quite acceptable to us.
Dreams bring the work of therapy quickly to a new level. Dreams have their own purpose and are not directed by the therapist but rather dreams are your own mind's work on important issues and problems. Often dreams draw on recent experiences in your day to day life, but this does not reflect the deeper meaning of the dreams. Since dreams present themselves in symbolic and often distorted ways (after all dreams are often about aspects of ourselves that are unacceptable to us, and so our mind will hide the meaning in various ways), we often cannot decipher the meaning without help.
Dreams are customized experiences for each dreamer. For example, a "horse" in one person's dreams may fit the generally expected meaning for that symbol, but for someone else a horse may bring up personal associations giving it a totally different meaning. Also, what comes spontaneously to mind as one recounts a dream (or thinks of various parts of the dream) are often the key to understanding the dream.
Ultimately, dream interpretation is made within the context of a close understanding between two people, and is more art then science.
Dreams bring the work of therapy quickly to a new level. Dreams have their own purpose and are not directed by the therapist but rather dreams are your own mind's work on important issues and problems. Often dreams draw on recent experiences in your day to day life, but this does not reflect the deeper meaning of the dreams. Since dreams present themselves in symbolic and often distorted ways (after all dreams are often about aspects of ourselves that are unacceptable to us, and so our mind will hide the meaning in various ways), we often cannot decipher the meaning without help.
Dreams are customized experiences for each dreamer. For example, a "horse" in one person's dreams may fit the generally expected meaning for that symbol, but for someone else a horse may bring up personal associations giving it a totally different meaning. Also, what comes spontaneously to mind as one recounts a dream (or thinks of various parts of the dream) are often the key to understanding the dream.
Ultimately, dream interpretation is made within the context of a close understanding between two people, and is more art then science.