ABSTRACT
Dream interpretation is a valuable tool used by psychoanalysts. Psycho-analytically oriented sex therapists can utilize this tool in understanding the unconscious factors responsible for sexual dysfunction. Clinical psychoanalytic studies have shown that it is crucial for successful sex therapy to work through unconscious phenomena, such as unresolved conflicts, transferential distortions, and resistance (Levay and Weissberg, 1979). Although presented here within a psychoanalytic framework described by Levay and Weissberg, dreams can obviously be used within many other theoretical models. For example, Adlerians would concentrate on the manifest content of the dream, regarding the dream as an effort at problem solving. Some Gestalt therapists would see each element in the dream as representing some aspect of the self that needs to be owned and integrated into the larger whole.
