ABSTRACT
Memory re-consolidation is the capacity of the human brain to update long-term memory, which is especially crucial for changes in psychotherapy as it may be a key mechanism of change explaining outcome in a variety of psychotherapy modalities. In this chapter the role of dreaming in memory re-consolidation is being scrutinized. Considering that dreams are still considered the “royal road” to the unconscious, where highly emotional conflictual themes are being held repressed, dreams will inevitably deal with them. The corrective emotional experience with painful affects of the past faced in psychotherapies will elicit dreams, where re-consolidation may take place. Recurring on the “dream-generation-model” (Moser & von Zeppelin, 1996, an empirical method) – the Zurich Dream Process Coding System (ZDPCS) – where the manifest dream is considered to be a candidate for re-consolidation, is introduced. This method is applied in the ongoing MODE Study in order to investigate psychic transformations during psychoanalyses.
