Sigmund Freud’s Method of Dream Interpretation

Sigmund Freud wrote a second series of letters on psychoanalysis in 1933. This series was published in the book New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, translated from German and edited by James Strachey. In that series, Freud revised his theory on dreams. I'll briefly summarize the main points on Freud's methodical approach to interpreting dreams. "[Dream] analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being a depth psychology." (P 7)

Some important things to remember in this kind of analysis.
1) There is a distinction between the manifest content of dreams and the latent dream-thoughts.
2) The wish-fulfilling function is not contradicted by anxiety dreams.
3) Associations to the dream occur within at least a day of the dream, so the dreamer has to be able to recall these associations.
4) The communicator (dream interpreter) discovers what is essential in the dream by processing the associations -- doing the dream work.

Begin dream interpretation by establishing an approach. Two concepts are: 1) The dream is called the text of the dream, or manifest dream and 2) what the interpreter suspects to be behind the dream is described as the latent dream thoughts. The interpreter will have to take a practical approach by changing the manifest dream into the latent one; and then take a theoretical approach by explaining how this change took place in the dreamer’s mind. The practical approach will call for a technique. The theoretical approach will explain the hypothetical dream-work. You can see a dream analyzed using Freud's method of interpretation in Bibliomania's article, The Analysis of a Specimen Dream.