A dream for real: dreams and transference in children

The author draws upon a brief clinical vignette describing a young child’s therapy to show how a dream, brought to a session by the child, is the product of the work of transforming and humanizing the self’s defense mechanisms, in and through the transference relationship. Referring to the writings of the Freudians César and Sara Botella, this reflection prompts us to rethink the prior work of the figurability of the unrepresentable sensorial experience, so that traumatic experiences can emerge as images, and thus to the consciousness..