**5. Conclusions**

The goal of this chapter was to present the historical, functional, and processual perspectives on working on dreams in CBT. Issues related to dreams are rarely raised during therapeutic sessions in this therapeutic approach. Although research on dreams had an important place when cognitive therapy was established by Beck, ideological, financial, and pragmatic reasons led to its abandonment. Only a few methods related to dreams have been elaborated within CBT, for instance the DMR method of dream interpretation created by Montangero [2] and the guidelines for using dreams defined by Freeman and White [8]. There are very few studies on them; the only exception is the cognitive-experimental model of dream interpretation established by Hill [4]. This model has great empirical support; however, it is not dedicated to CBT. Because of the lack of research on the use of dreams in CBT, cognitive-behavioral therapists are not trained in this area and therefore do not work with their patients' dreams. This vicious circle should be broken by conducting empirical studies about the use of dream analysis in the course of CBT, creating manuals for work with dreams, as well as training programs for therapists about such work. As has been presented, working with dreams in CBT can be useful and beneficial when elaborating on the functional perspective. Dreams can not only facilitate the therapeutic process, but also broaden the self-knowledge of the patient, provide clinical information for the therapist, and be a measure of therapeutic change [26]. Dream analysis can be incorporated into all of the stages of CBT. It is possible to refer to it during clinical diagnosis and case formulation, realization of therapeutic goals, and evaluation and preservation of therapeutic achievements. For dream content, the same methods as for working with automatic thoughts can be used. There is potential for dream analysis within CBT; however, this area is still waiting to be explored by cognitive-behavioral therapists, their patients, and researchers interested in CBT and dreams.

#### **Author details**

Dagna Skrzypińska\* and Barbara Szmigielska \*Address all correspondence to: dagna.sk@gmail.com Institute of Psychology, Unit of Sleep Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
