The Significance of Dreams

This book looks at dreams from a 21st century perspective. Taking inspiration from Freud's insights, the contributors pursue psychoanalytic interest into both neuroscience and the modern psychoanalytic consulting room. The chapters cover laboratory research on dreaming alongside the modern clinical use of dreams and link together clinical and empirical research integrating classical ideas with the plurality of psychoanalytic theoretical constructs available to modern researchers. Dreams are created and psychoanalysts writing about dreams have traditionally represented the cutting edge of clinical and theoretical development. This book is no exception to this and many of the contributions, as well as the epistemological positions taken by the writers, represent a kind of radical openness to new ways of thinking about the clinical situation and about theory, which will be necessary for psychoanalysis as a discipline in the coming years. In line with the ambition of the editors of the volume, the book represents an integration of theories and disciplines, which creates the scientific context for modern psychoanalysis. Linking clinical research to extra-clinical research via the royal road of dreaming runs through all the contributions which cover dreaming as it sheds light on clinical conditions such as depression, trauma or dreams as they form a core aspect of clinical work, be that as a co-construction or as shared play between therapist and patients. The book provides insight through dreams to understand mental function in all clinical situations and across all conditions.

Peter Fonagy, PhD, FBA, is Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis and Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology at University College London. He is Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, London. Horst Kchele is the former director of the University Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at Ulm University, Germany (1990-2000), also former director of the Research Centre for Psychotherapy, Stuttgart (1988-2004); he teaches now at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin. Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber is Professor of Psychoanalytical Psychology at the University of Kassel, Germany, and Director of the Sigmund-Freud Institut, Frankfurt am Main. She is a training analyst of the Germany Psychoanalytical Association and a member of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society. David Taylor is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical "Society. He is chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association's Clinical Research Sub-Committee.