Since Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, the manner in which psychoanalysts understand and interpret dreams has advanced considerably. At the beginning and right up to the 1950s psychoanalysts assumed that patients had the ability to find an access to the symbolic implications of their dreams and to understand the verbal interpretation suggested to them by therapists. Since the 1950s it has become clear that an increasing number of patients proved to be poorly accessible for symbolic implications and that the verbal interpretation of analysts had only little effect. Since then one of the aims of the psychoanalytical process with such patients has been to gradually allow them access to symbolic thinking, which represents the foundations of verbal communication with others and also with oneself.
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