ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that dreams can be considered on all the levels that Carl Jung outlines—objective, subjective, transference, and archetypal levels: this opens up the full breadth of their symbolic meaning. Following W. Bion, psychoanalysts like D. Meltzer and T. H. Ogden have recognized the importance of the process of dreaming, dominated as it is by emotion and association, in the life of the individual and as a part of the process of thinking and, development itself. The development of the individual depends on their ability to know about their emotional life; this knowledge represents an extension of the ego and is, therefore, a growth of the self. Exploring the associations to and around dream images and dream narratives, paying particular attention to the emotional links, is a simple, effective and illuminating way of understanding the symbolic nature of dreams and, thereby, of helping the individual to develop themselves, and their relationships.
