Dream Analysis as a Tool for Growth
Freud drew attention to this part of life in 1900 with his book on dreams. His concept is that a dream is a distorted representation of a secret, incompatible wish that does not agree with the conscious attitude and that is censored, or rather, distorted. This makes the dream unrecognized by the conscious mind, but the wish still lives and shows itself.
This leaves us with a dream that is distorted, censored, and inaccessible to the conscious mind. But is this true? Can we say with certainty that a dream is so unclear? It is quite possible, because a dream is like a censored secret; otherwise we could understand it. We generally do not understand our dreams, and you will rarely come across dreams that are clear from beginning to end. Freud’s solution to impose a finite structure on the origin of dreams limits their meaning and controls the understanding of our dreams.
Do not interpret
Fritz Perls states: “In Gestalt therapy we do not interpret dreams. We do something much more interesting with them. Instead of analyzing and dissecting the dream, we want to bring it back to life.” Life in Gestalt therapy becomes more authentic for people who are able to experience and express their own feelings.
Avoidance
To understand dreams, we need to look at the structure of avoidance in Gestalt therapy. We all have holes in our personalities. These are empty spaces, areas of our lives and our personalities that we have given up or are afraid of. “If I let myself experience this, it will be nothing or I will cry forever and ever.”
Most role-playing is designed to drain our energy, not to confront the problem, to avoid the anxiety that this produces. If we resist the temptation to return to clichés and role-playing, we use our energy to live with the anxiety of our rejected parts.
Freud once called dreams the “Via Regina,” the royal road to the subconscious. Perls states that this is the royal road to integration, to regaining possession of certain parts of our personality. The unconscious is difficult to know, but a dream is the most spontaneous reality we have. It comes without our intention. We do not plan it intentionally. There is nothing absurd or distorted in a dream. It is real and we feel it as a real experience. In our waking life there is always a certain control over our actions, imposed by the environment or produced within ourselves. In a dream we fly, change shape, are swallowed and return whole. Perls’s claim and Gestalt theory is that all elements of a dream are fragments of our personality. We must regain the projected and fragmented parts of the personality and the hidden potential that appears in the dream.
Produce a “play”
In Gestalt therapy, by working on dreams, we enable the client to produce a “play” where he plays all the roles, writes the script and dialogue, and then acts. The therapist’s job is not to interpret the dream or even point out to the client what is happening in the dream, but to help them become aware of the parts of the dream that they may be avoiding. This can be projecting their own thoughts, words, feelings, etc. onto something/someone else in the dream. By becoming each of the people, things, and even emotions and ways in the dream, a person truly becomes that thing! “Whatever is in the dream, become that”. The therapist encourages the client to feel, experience, and even enjoy what is happening in each part of the dream.
*Keywords: psychotherapist Zagreb, dream analysis, Freud, psychoanalysis, somatic experiencing. body-oriented therapy
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