ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on countertransference and the dream from a Jungian perspective. It includes material written by a trainee and a patient's account of her dreams. For those who prefer a more theoretical journey, the chapter also includes suggestions for further reading about dreams and dream interpretation. Carl Jung gave special consideration to the initial dream in therapy which he felt often encapsulated a key difficulty or complex that the client was seeking to integrate. Sigmund Freud wrote that dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, but this is equally true of the analyst's dreams. Jung became critical of Freud's reductive method of dream analysis, he felt it insufficiently valued the meaning of the unconscious spontaneous production of dream images. Whereas Freud specified that the function of the dream was to act as 'the guardian of sleep', Jung emphasized the purposive and compensatory character of the unconscious and its symbol-making capacity.
