Freud famously called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious,” and those of us who practice analytic therapy today have found great value in exploring the many stories our minds tell us while sleeping. This recent article in PsychCentral explains why our dreams offer such fertile material for psychology, and what benefits a patient can hope to gain by spelunking into the recesses of their minds:

A man started a job in which he had to learn a new computer program. On his first day of work, he couldn’t get the hang of it. That night he dreamed about being in an office environment where coworkers were making fun of him. In his childhood, his two older brothers had made fun of him. When he awoke he recalled his brothers, and he became aware that he had been emotionally blocked on his first day of work because he was afraid he would fail and be ridiculed. When he became aware of this, he went to work with a new attitude on the second day and quickly mastered the program.

This is just one example in the piece; others address topics such as personal limitations, creative block, and sexual shame. Often our dreams contain epiphanies and surface injuries we have long repressed. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is how you begin to listen.

To learn more about unlocking the coded language of dreams, please contact the New York psychotherapists of PPSC.