Narrative Structure of Dreams in Psychoanalysis

This study takes dreams from psychoanalytic publications and analyses their narrative structure considering five factors: psychoanalytic school of the author of the publication, diagnosis of the analyzand, gender of the analyzand and the psychoanalyst, and age of the analyzand. The way these factors affect the narrative structure of the dream was studied considering specifically the influence they have over narrative telling, contextualizing statements, affective-evaluative remarks and comments towards the analyst. dreams of 46 analyzands, published in the Revista de Psicoanalisis, were studied. results show that the definition of dream considered is central for its structural analysis. When only the narrative of the dream is taken into account, those older than 39 produce more personal narrative telling related to action facts and there are more nonpersonal narrative telling of thought facts if the analyst is Freudian. When associations and commentaries are included, regarding school, there are more affects if the analyst is lacanian. Besides, those diagnosed as narcissists produce more evaluative remarks and those diagnosed as borderline produce more comments towards the analyst. Finally, in relation to the gender of the analyst if he is male, he seems to produce more narrative telling of personal affective facts.