ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that how the technique of dream interpretation has de facto assigned increasing importance to the so-called manifest dream, contrary to Sigmund Freud’s systematically repeated explicit warning that one should not fall into the temptation of regarding the manifest content as a genuine psychical product. The practice of dream interpretation has nevertheless followed a different path. The manifest dream reflects mind/brain processes as they attempt to resolve current life problems and conflicts, including the forms in which they are expressed in the transference. The truth is that during the last decades many have attempted to clarify the complex relationship between theory and practice in psychoanalysis. M. R. Lansky and M. F. Reiser highlight the fact that Freud’s primary objective in The Interpretation of Dreams was to explain how the mind works when producing dreams.
