Practices of joint meaning creation. Dreams in psychoanalytic discussion

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using conversation analysis of audio recorded psychoanalytic sessions, this article investigates dream interpretation as conversational practice. We focus on the ways in which the “real world” meanings of objects or events in the dream are collaboratively created. Three routes for the meaning creation were found. (1) In plain assertions, either the analyst or the patient asserts the meaning of a dream element, for example stating that the cow in the dream means women. (2) In meaning creation through redescription, the analyst describes anew events belonging to the real world or the dream, which have been referred to in the earlier conversation. This redescription makes possible the subsequent assertion of explicit linkages between the dream and the real world. (3) In the merging of referential worlds, the analyst extends the patient’s real-world description with images that are recognisably from the dream: the world of the dream and the real world are thus momentarily merged. In discussion, we point out that in our audio recorded data, the dream interpretation does not primarily involve revealing repressed and unconscious ideas, but rather it involves reminding the patient of something that the patient already knows but is reluctant to think or talk about.