Dreams, memories, and the psychoanalytic process

Abstract

Freud believed the dreamer’s wish amounted to the most powerful motive underlying all dreaming processes. Ángel Garma suggested traumatic memories might play a similar or even greater role. In the present paper, I extend Garma’s suggestion and propose that unconscious memories of interpersonal interactions are the basic components of dream narratives. Within this perspective, latent dream content includes a wealth of information about the unconscious experience of the transference situation. Through a clinical vignette, I show the reader how appropriate transference interpretations allow the identification of such transferential emotions and their reintegration within the psychoanalytic field.