The patient's dreams and the countertransference

Abstract

Dreams reported in psychoanalysis may reflect not only the transference of the patient, but also the countertransference, counterresistance, and counteranxiety of the psychoanalyst. Because of the communicative capacity of dreams, the analyst may use the patient's dreams as supervision. Objective signs are described that may indicate countertransference interference in the analyst's dream interpretation. Through a process of reciprocal, interactive dream interpretation, the dream's meaning about the transference—countertransference matrix can be clarified. Usually, there is an intermediate stage in working on a dream, during which the dream meaning is enacted in the dream‐interpretation process. Clinical examples include the “Lovely Dream”; reported by Freud, along with examples from the casebook of Gill and Hoffman (1982) and from the author's own practice.