WORKING WITH DREAMS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

What Do Psychoanalytic Therapists Report That They Do?

Hill, Clara E. PhD
Liu, Jingqing MA
Spangler, Patricia MA
Sim, Wonjin MA
Schottenbauer, Michele PhD

¹Department of Psychology, University of Maryland
²Department of Psychology, Catholic University of America

We thank the Consortium for Psychoanalytic Research in Washington, D.C. for allowing us to collect data.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Clara E. Hill, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail: [email protected]

Psychoanalytic Psychology 25(4):p 565-573, October 2008. | DOI: 10.1037/a0013539

Forty-seven psychoanalytic therapists completed a questionnaire about dream work. Overall, results indicated that therapists had very positive attitudes toward dreams, worked with their own dreams, sought out dream training, and felt competent working with dreams. Therapists estimated that they worked with dreams with about half of their clients about half of the time in psychotherapy. They were most willing to work with dreams when clients had recurrent or troubling dreams or nightmares, were psychologically minded, were seeking growth, were interested in dreams, and were willing to work with dreams.