Concept
Dream-work
The processes that turn latent dream-thoughts into the manifest dream.
- Narrower concepts
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 3
- Related
- Alpha function
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1900 Freud set out the mechanism of dream formation in Die Traumdeutung (1900). In the Dora case history he refers back to that book's rule that every dream represents a wish as fulfilled, in disguise when the wish is repressed, and tests it against Dora's first dream; he calls the dream a detour around repression, a means of indirect representation.
reworked by
- Wilfred Bion 1962 In Learning from Experience Bion makes the work of dreaming continuous with waking life: alpha function must work on the sense impressions of an emotional experience, asleep or awake, before they can serve as dream-thoughts, and its products resemble the dream images Freud interpreted. The 'dream' it makes possible keeps conscious and unconscious apart, which Bion offers as the reason the dream of classical theory resists being made conscious.
gave rise to
- Alpha function 1962 Bion modelled alpha function on dreaming: it is the function that makes the 'dream' possible, and the alpha-elements it produces resemble, or may be identical with, the visual images of dreams that Freud's interpretation resolves into their latent content.