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Using dreams in psychoanalysis with psychotic patients

Abstract

This paper offers some practical solutions to the most usual predicaments that usually arises when exploring dreams in psychoanalysis with psychotic patients, such as the non-distinction between dream, reality and delirium, the difficulty with free association and the invasion of nightmares. It advocates for using dreams in psychosis clinic and describes how dreams can contribute to treatment, by turning ineffable experiences into discourse, allowing historization and replacing association with dream chaining. Dream life can be an effective remedy against the return to the real, being preferable to interrogate dreams with precise questions aimed to link them to the dreamer’s life and their subjective position.

Keywords:
psychoses; schizophrenia; paranoia; unconscious; dream

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