my therapist has a different way of interpreting dreams (and one that i find frustrating). she takes a very subjective approach to dream interpretation, that of Carl Jung I believe:

Jung proposed two basic approaches to analyzing dream material: the objective and the subjective. In the objective approach, every person in the dream refers to the person they are: mother is mother, girlfriend is girlfriend, etc. In the subjective approach, every person in the dream represents an aspect of the dreamer. Jung argued that the subjective approach is much more difficult for the dreamer to accept, but that in most good dream-work, the dreamer will come to recognize that the dream characters can represent an unacknowledged aspect of the dreamer. Thus, if the dreamer is being chased by a crazed killer, the dreamer may come eventually to recognize his own homicidal impulses. Gestalt therapists extended the subjective approach, claiming that even the inanimate objects in a dream can represent aspects of the dreamer.

so if i tell her i had a dream about running away from my mom for instance, she would say that i'm running away from the "part of me that is represented by my mom." i don't find this approach very helpful, as i think if i'm running away from my mom then i should explore the part of me that might be afraid of my mom, or wants to detach from my mom, or is afraid of my mom running away from me, etc.