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Dreams create unique opportunities and challenges for the child and adolescent psychoanalyst. The psychoanalytic axiom that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious” (Freud, 1900, p. 608) can exert an unhelpful pressure to understand and interpret dreams prematurely, especially in work with children and adolescents. It may be useful for the analyst who works with children and adolescents to think about dream imagery kaleidoscopically, allowing his own images of the dreamer’s images to float in mind and to move in and out of consciousness in response to other verbalizations, play, behaviors, and shifting countertransferences. I encourage an open-ended process to dream work that tolerates uncertainty and ongoing questions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines clinical and theoretical aspects of insight as a therapeutic tool in the analysis of dreams of children and adolescents. Suggestions are offered for creative ways of engaging the child’s interest in dreamwork. Although some analysts have thought that little can be accomplished by working with dreams in the analysis of children, I demonstrate that gaining access to unconscious conflicts, working in the context of transference, and deepening the material through the use of insight has a salutary effect on the child or adolescent patient. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses R. Karush and A. Schmukler's dreams from their patients that connect the analytic process, transference and insight and how they worked with them. It cites the example of 7 year old Tanya which shows how dream can illuminate the transference and Schmulker's description of how the dream of monsters of 7 year old Jim prompted him to wonder about his role in injuries and accidents. It notes how they demonstrate in their articles how dreams facilitate the process of knowing.