ABSTRACT
In reality, Fritz Perls borrowed his main method of dream analysis from another dissident psychoanalyst, Otto Rank. This chapter describes complementary approaches to dream work; it does however seem necessary to go briefly over the traditional vision as well as to cover recent research in this area. In fact, although the psychoanalytical approach was dominant from 1900 to 1960, the situation has since evolved, especially since the work of the French researcher Pr Michel Jouvet. Cold-blooded animals never dream, but their nervous system self-regenerates throughout their life, renewing neurons just like ordinary cells. The pregnant woman has twice the dreams she would normally have, to "accompany" her child's neurogenesis. Our memories are encoded and stored during dreaming, especially those with emotional content, and important experiences, either positive or negative. Freud considered that "dreams have the power to heal, to relieve suffering," and his follower Ferenczi thought of dreams as "traumatolytic": that they could dissolve trauma, and "digest" it unconsciously.
