ABSTRACT
The most fundamental change in psychoanalytic thinking about dreams has to do with their place in mental life. Sigmund Freud thought of dreams as mini-pathological events that occurred relatively rarely, about once or twice a night, when a wish arose that would disturb sleep. Since dreams are such a regular occurrence during the night, it seems less sensible to look for a single cause of dreaming. The analyst can use a dream to indicate significant emotions, defenses, or past experiences of the dreamer, which may lead to an inquiry into an aspect of the dreamer's life not attended to before. The dream may have many kinds of information about the dreamer condensed in the dream. A major modification in contemporary psychoanalytic work with dreams is that we do not need the dreamer's associations to understand most dreams. The process of dream revision does not stop even with tertiary revision.
