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The dream in couple therapy

This paper deals with the question of the dream in couple therapy, taken as a technical resource for analysis, in the elaboration of a traumatic material. The dream is understood by Freud as an individualized work, representative of repressed content related to a forbidden wish. However, the dream, under the theory of René Kaës about its polyphony, gains a shared function when present in the intersubjective dimension of a group, family and, in the case of this study, of a couple. Not only the dream content, but the work carried out by the pre-conscious as well, reveals relevant data for clinical investigation. The marital link comprises a fertile ground in which psychological activities, such as projections and identifications, appear with more intensity, and are shared in dreaming. Fragments of a couple clinical case show how the dream can be a way of understanding intersubjectivity that is bound to repressed material.

dream; dream content; psychological work; couple therapy


Programa de Pós-graduação em Psicologia e do Programa de Pós-graduação em Psicobiologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte Caixa Postal 1622, 59078-970 Natal RN Brazil, Tel.: +55 84 3342-2236(5) - Natal - RN - Brazil
E-mail: revpsi@cchla.ufrn.br