Breakdown of La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño.
Questions & Answers about La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño.
In Spanish, many nouns referring to people have a masculine and a feminine form:
- el psicólogo = the (male) psychologist
- la psicóloga = the (female) psychologist
The sentence La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño is talking about a female psychologist, so the article and the noun are both feminine:
- la (feminine singular article)
- psicóloga (feminine singular noun)
You normally need an article before a singular countable noun:
- La psicóloga = The psychologist (specific person)
- Una psicóloga = A psychologist (not specific)
Psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño sounds incomplete in Spanish, almost like saying “Psychologist wants to analyze my dream” in English without the or a.
The only common case where you can drop the article is in things like:
- Soy psicóloga. = I am a psychologist.
But when you use the noun as the subject like in your sentence, you normally keep the article:
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño. ✅
Pronunciation:
- psicóloga is pronounced approximately: see-KO-lo-ga (Latin American)
- The p in ps is silent.
- The stress is on the có, which is why there is an accent mark: psi–CÓ–lo–ga.
Syllables: psi–CÓ–lo–ga
So you don’t say p at the beginning; it starts with an s sound.
The structure here is:
- querer + infinitive = to want to + verb
Examples:
- Quiero comer. = I want to eat.
- Ella quiere dormir. = She wants to sleep.
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño. = The psychologist wants to analyze my dream.
You do not add a or para in this construction. The infinitive analizar directly follows quiere:
- quiere analizar = wants to analyze ✅
- quiere a analizar ❌
- quiere para analizar ❌
Quiere is:
- 3rd person singular
- present indicative
- of the verb querer (to want / to love)
Present indicative forms of querer:
- yo quiero – I want
- tú quieres – you want (informal)
- él / ella / usted quiere – he / she / you (formal) want
- nosotros queremos – we want
- ustedes / ellos quieren – you all / they want
We use quiere because the subject is la psicóloga (she):
- La psicóloga quiere… = She wants…
Quiere and quiera are different moods:
- quiere = present indicative (facts/statements)
- quiera = present subjunctive (wishes, hypotheticals, after que in many cases)
In your sentence, there is no que introducing another subject + clause; we’re just making a direct statement of what she wants to do herself:
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño.
She (the psychologist) wants to analyze my dream. ✅
You would use quiera in a structure like:
- La psicóloga quiere que yo analice mi sueño.
The psychologist wants me to analyze my dream.
Here we have quiere que + subjunctive (analice) because the person doing the second action (I) is different from the first subject (the psychologist).
In English you need to plus the base verb:
- wants to analyze
In Spanish, the infinitive is a single word that already includes the idea of to:
- analizar = to analyze
- comer = to eat
- dormir = to sleep
So you don’t need a separate word:
- quiere analizar = wants to analyze
- quiero comer = I want to eat
- queremos dormir = we want to sleep
Sueño is a noun with two common meanings:
dream (what you experience while sleeping)
- Tuve un sueño raro. = I had a weird dream.
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño. = The psychologist wants to analyze my dream.
sleepiness / drowsiness (the feeling of wanting to sleep)
- Tengo sueño. = I’m sleepy. / I feel sleepy.
Context tells you which meaning is intended.
In your sentence, mi sueño is clearly my dream, not my sleepiness.
Two things are going on:
The letter ñ
- ñ is a separate letter from n in Spanish.
- ñ = a ny sound, like the ny in canyon.
- sueño is pronounced roughly SWEH-nyo.
The accent on é
- sueño is stressed on the e: SUÉ–ño.
- The accent mark shows where the stress goes and also distinguishes it from other forms like sueno (I sound) from the verb sonar.
So:
- sueño (with ñ and accent) = dream / sleepiness
- sueno (without ñ, without accent) would be a different word (and actually misspelled for most purposes here).
Mi is a possessive adjective:
- mi = my (singular noun)
- mis = my (plural noun)
So:
- mi sueño = my dream
- mis sueños = my dreams
If you said:
- el sueño = the dream (not saying whose)
- un sueño = a dream
In context, La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño means she wants to analyze my specific dream, so mi is the natural choice.
Yes. You can replace mi sueño with a direct object pronoun:
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño.
- La psicóloga lo quiere analizar.
- La psicóloga quiere analizarlo.
All three mean essentially the same:
- The psychologist wants to analyze it.
Note:
- lo replaces a masculine singular direct object (mi sueño).
- With querer + infinitive, the pronoun can go:
- before the conjugated verb: lo quiere analizar
- or attached to the infinitive: quiere analizarlo
The normal, neutral word order here is:
- [Subject] [verb] [infinitive] [object]
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño. ✅
Spanish does allow more flexible word order for emphasis, but La psicóloga mi sueño quiere analizar sounds very unnatural or poetic/dramatic at best.
Some more natural variations:
- La psicóloga quiere analizarlo. (using a pronoun)
- Mi sueño la psicóloga quiere analizarlo. (very marked; heavy emphasis on mi sueño, not typical everyday speech)
For regular, clear speech, stick with:
- La psicóloga quiere analizar mi sueño.
In this context, analizar is a normal transitive verb:
- analizar algo = to analyze something
- analizar mi sueño = to analyze my dream
Analizarse (reflexive) would mean something like to analyze oneself, which is different:
- La psicóloga quiere analizarse.
The psychologist wants to analyze herself.
So for analyze my dream, you use plain analizar, not the reflexive form.