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Compared to psychoanalysis, the social sciences have made but a modest contribution to the academic study of dreams. This article outlines a programme of research into dream productions. Dreams are apprehended at the intersection between the personal predispositions of the dreamer and their ‘existential condition’, the circumstances that gave rise to the dream in question, and the symbolic framework of dream production, which is characterised by the suspension of ordinary social interaction, a weakened control over images and the enactment of a dialogue of the self with the self.