The role of dreams in sex therapy

The interpretive use of dreams has become an established part of all dynamic psychotherapies. Their usefulness in sex therapy has thus far not been acknowledged. For the psychodynamically oriented sex therapist dreams can be particularly valuable in furnishing an understanding of those unconscious factors that cause sexual dysfunction, those that perpetuate dysfunction, and those that interfere with efforts to treat the dysfunction. By utilizing and integrating dream material into the sex therapy format, treatment is more likely to be successful and in a shorter period of time than can be accomplished by either sex therapy or psychoanalytic psychotherapy alone.