Dreams in analytic couple therapy

Consulting to and supervising recently trained individual psychotherapists, we have
found that many of them have heard that the dream is the royal road to the unconscious.
Yet they do not know how to work with dreams, even though there are many
thoughtful papers on the subject, beginning with Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1900b). Little
wonder then that analytic couple therapists may not know how to work with dreams in couple
therapy. They tend to focus on the context of the couple relationship, the projective identificatory
system of the relationship, the roots of its dynamics traced to family history, and the
expression of mother–infant and oedipal dynamics in the couple’s intimate life. Preferring these
routes to understanding unconscious dynamics, analytic couple therapists too often overlook
the analysis of dreams because they do not realise its power to “turn a page” in the couple’s
treatment (Quinodoz, 2002) and its value in treating sexual, marital, and family trauma issues
(D. Scharff & J. Scharff 1991, 2004; J. Scharff & D. Scharff, 1994).