Dreamwork - Psychodynamic Perspective

Psychodynamic Perspective

Sigmund Freud's theory of Psychoanalysis is largely based on the importance of the unconscious mind. According to the theory, the unconscious does not only affect a person during the day, but also in dreams. In the psychodynamic perspective, the transferring of unconscious thoughts into consciousness is called dreamwork. In dreams, there are two different types of content, the manifest and latent content. The latent content is the underlying, unconscious feelings and thoughts. The manifest content is made up of a combination of the latent thoughts and it is what is actually being seen in the dream. According to Carl Jung's principle of compensation, the reason that there is latent content in dreams is because the unconscious is making up for the limitations of the conscious mind. Since the conscious mind cannot be aware of all things at once, the latent content allows for these hidden away thoughts to be unlocked. Psychoanalysts use the knowledge of the process of dreamwork to analyze dreams. In other words, the clinician will study the manifest content to understand what the latent content is trying to say.