Bearing the unbearable: ancestral transmission through dreams and moving metaphors in the analtyic field

Abstract: This paper explores how untold and unresolved intergenerational trauma may be transmitted through unconscious channels of communication, manifesting in the dreams of descendants. Unwitting carriers for that which was too horrific for their ancestors to bear, descendants may enter analysis through an unconscious need to uncover past secrets, piece together ancestral histories before the keys to comprehending their terrible inheritance die with their forebears. They seek the relational containment of the analytic relationship to provide psychological conditions to bear the unbearable, know the unknowable, speak the unspeakable and redeem the unredeemable. In the case of ‘Rachael’, initial dreams gave rise to what Hobson (1984) called ‘moving metaphors of self’ in the analytic field. Dream imagery, projective and introjective processes in the transference‐countertransference dynamics gradually revealed an unknown ancestral history. I clarify the back and forth process from dream to waking dream thoughts to moving metaphors and differentiate the moving metaphor from a living symbol. I argue that the containment of the analytic relationship nested within the security of the analytic space is a necessary precondition for such healing processes to occur.     

Telling Dreams and Transference: The Interactional Function of Dreams as Free Associations

Since Freud's Dream Interpretation and his additional writings on the analysis of dreams, the technique of handling a dream report within the analytic session has remained nearly unchanged. It is characterised by dream-centred associations and their interpretation in regard to dream content and to transference. This approach constitutes an alien element within contemporary interactional psychoanalytic technique and tends to provoke resistances in the analytic dialogue. This article stresses the function of dream reporting during the session with respect to the interactional process. It is concluded that sufficient attention should be given to interactional analysis of dream reporting in accordance with the questions: Why does the patient at this point of the process tell a dream, and why does he tell this very dream instead of another?     

On dreaming one's patient: reflections on an aspect of countertransference dreams

This paper explores the phenomenon of the countertransference dream. Until very recently, such dreams have tended to be seen as reflecting either unanalyzed difficulties in the analyst or unexamined conflicts in the analytic relationship. While the analyst's dream of his/her patient may represent such problems, the author argues that such dreams may also indicate the ways in which the analyst comes to know the patient on a deep, unconscious level by processing the patient's communicative projective identifications. Two extended clinical examples of the author's countertransference dreams are offered. The author also discusses the use of countertransference dreams in psychoanalytic supervision.     

Configurational approach to manifest dream analysis: Possible acceleration of the patient's communication in psychoanalytic psychotherapy

This paper presents an approach to dream analysis utilizing the manifest content of a number of consecutive dreams from the same patient. Following a review of the literature, it is noted that in once-a-week psychotherapy there is often very little time for exhaustive dream analysis to unravel the buried meanings within the latent dream content. Twenty categories have been established for the configurational analysis, which is applied to the analysis of the first eleven dreams of a patient in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The authors independently analyzed the patient's dreams using each of the 20 categories with high reliability, then combined their contributions. This data was then compared with the treating analyst's independent clinical observations about the twenty categories.     

The traumatic element in the typical dream of feeling embarrassed at being naked

Material is presented from three cases, where analysis of repetitive dreams of feeling embarrassment at being partially or totally naked was an important feature of the treatment. The indifference by the other people in the dream to the dreamer's nakedness was initially linked to perceived transference slights at the hands of the analyst, and later to repeated episodes of actually being treated indifferently at the hands of the parents. This indifference was related to latency or adolescent attempts by the patients to gain love or attention from the parents by exhibitionistic means. The stereotypical presentation of the manifest content of these dreams is seen as evidence for their underlying traumatic roots. Such dreams are likened to the typical examination dreams described by Freud, which have also been noted by others to have traumatic roots. This finding is consistent with my own work with certain repetitive manifest dream configurations and with Freud's (1920) reevaluation of his theory of dreams in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, wherein he noted that dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neurosis often manifestly repeated the traumatic situation in an attempt to master it retrospectively.     

Dances of Desire: Commentary on Papers by Dianne Elise and Jonathan H. Slavin

The richness and creativity of early classical work with dreams became narrowed through doctrinaire obedience to Freud's brilliant hypotheses. Interpersonal psychoanalysis, though originally little interested in problems of mind and private mentation, may be well suited, in part due to its lack of a comprehensive dream theory, to a clinical approach to dreams that is relatively open‐minded, pluralistic, complexly layered, collaborative, and playful. Multiple possibilities for the meanings of dreams and multiple ways of approaching dreams in analytic therapy are suggested. Although many therapists for complex reasons shy away from working on dreams, an interpersonal approach recognizes that several wishes of both patient and analyst may be significantly fulfilled in the pleasures of working together on dreams. If it is mindful of what is unfortunately a growing tendency to project into all dreams a single‐minded preoccupation with transference and countertransference, and if it respects the world of dream imagery in its own right, interpersonal psychoanalysis can make a genuine contribution to our understanding of dreams and dreams can lend an important dimension to interpersonal concepts. Several clinical examples are presented in an effort to highlight an approach that “stays with the image”; and allows the dream images to make their way into the psychoanalytic dialogue.     

The fate of the dream in contemporary psychoanalysis

Freud's metapsychology of dream formation has implicitly been discarded, as indicated in a brief review of trends in psychoanalytic thinking about dreams, with a focus on the relationship of the dream process to ego capacities. The current bias toward exclusive emphasis on the exploration of the analytic relationship and the transference has evolved at the expense of classical, in-depth dream interpretation, and, by extension, at the expense of strengthening the patient's capacity for self-inquiry. This trend is shown to be especially evident in the treatment of borderline patients, who today are believed by many analysts to misuse the dream in the analytic situation. An extended clinical example of a borderline patient with whom an unmodified Freudian associative technique of dream interpretation is used with good outcome illustrates the author's contrary conviction. In clinical practice, we should neglect neither the uniqueness of the dream as a central intrapsychic event nor the Freudian art of total dream analysis.     

The drama of the gifted child and the psycho-analyst's narcissistic disturbance.

In order to develop a true self, the child needs, in the first weeks and months of his life, his mother's appropriate emotional response, mirroring and respect. These narcissistic aspects have to be distinguished from the drive wishes. Only the mother's appropriate responses make it possible for the child to experience his feelings as belonging to his own self. If the child does not get the right narcissistic response, he will continue to search for narcissistic supplies for the rest of his life. The most suitable objects for this will be his own children initially, who are completely at his disposal. Specially gifted children who are sensitive, alert and have many 'antennae', will quickly learn to adapt to the narcissistic needs of their parents. Their behaviour will then give the mother all the mirroring, consideration and admiration which she had missed as a child herself. The result will be that, in spite of excellent performance, the child's own true self cannot develop. All this leads to narcissistic vulnerability and to new attempts in the adult to find at last an available 'mother' in his own child, partner, or, if he has become a psycho-analyst, in his patient. In the transference this type of analysand first experiences narcissistic rage before deep mourning is possible. This process of mourning enables him finally to accept his own deprivation as a child, to give up the unconscious idealizations and with them the hope of finding such a 'mother'. This leads regularly to the liberation of the life forces and allows creativity to develop. Only after this has been achieved is the analysis of drive conflicts possible and becomes emotionally effective.     

Witch-mother is which? The potential role of the analyst in facilitating authentic motherhood

Abstract

This paper explores challenges in the treatment of women suffering from disturbances in maternal identification. A review of the psychoanalytic and developmental literature focuses on the frequent finding of early-onset mother–daughter relational disturbance involving maternal narcissistic fragility and exaggerated dependency needs, intergenerational trauma, and related psychopathology including mutual affect dysregulation. A case example of a young woman with a severe anxiety disorder is presented and discussed to illustrate the challenges to the traditional psychoanalytic technique. This patient avoided pregnancy into her late thirties and entered analysis with feelings of inauthenticity, characterological masochism, and a “secret mission” to unmask the witch recurring in her dreams. Through an elaborate working-through of negative maternal transference, the analyst and patient saw through the birth of the patient’s authentic self, a new approach to her career, her relationships with men, and her anticipation of the birth of a child by the sixth year of treatment. The author posits that psychoanalytic technique benefits from contemporary, attachment, and trauma research that supports the analyst’s playing a more active role in approaching, co-regulating, tolerating, and integrating avoided affects and memory traces that are associated with early-onset relational disturbances worsened by the effects of violence, maltreatment, and loss.     

The dreamer's use of space

The dreamer often portrays wishes, conflicts, or current problems in terms of visual-spatial representations and metaphors.The spatial dimensions of dreams frequently signify important affective themes of the dream. In doing so, they serve to continue or reflect processes of self-recognition in relation to the environment, processes that began in early childhood, when the developing child's experience of movement through space played a central role in organizing affect and motivation systems that contribute to emerging schemata of the self. Representations of that movement through space gradually grow to serve a broader symbolic function, as may be seen in the spatial dimensions of both play and dreaming. Spatial relations then become building blocks for aspects of metaphoric and abstract thinking. The resultant personal "geography," a constellation of physical imagery of a body moving through space, retains an important place in mental life as development unfolds. It is complemented and enhanced by the achievement of language, but it never recedes as a core aspect of self. Developmental and neurobiological observations suggest the clinical usefulness of heightened attention to this spatial aspect of dreams. Clinical examples illustrate how attention to the spatial arrangements of a dream and the dreamer's movement through space can enhance access to the affective tone and meaning of the dream.     

Transference neurosis as a waking dream: notes on a clinical enigma

This paper demonstrates clinically that the interactional features of a transference neurosis are the waking equivalents of a manifest dream. Through analytic investigation of the emerging repetitive extraverbal elements of apparent transference resistance behavior, it is discovered that the systematic analysis of the details of such behavior yields a picture of synthetic construction fundamentally the same as that seen in dreams. By using Freud's technique of systematic dream interpretation, the tightly organized, coded, and camouflaged presence of many key compromise formations determining a neurosis are found to be represented in compact, highly condensed clinical interactions, providing an overall picture of dreamwork in action. The four components of dreamwork are found to be the principal means by which the unconscious genetic and dynamic material is represented in the analytic field.     

Using Dreams in Treating Couples' Sexual Issues

The authors demonstrate use of couples' dreams in couple therapy for problems with intimacy, sexuality, and fidelity. Condensation, symbolization, and projective identification are mechanisms that result in the conversion of emotional and relational pain into sexual symptomatology. Dreams use similar processes to hide and at the same time convey emotional issues, and so dream analysis with couples is particularly useful in exploring and treating dysfunctional sexual relationships. As in individual psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, dreams in couple therapy express the transference. The authors show how dream analysis renders the couple's shared transference for resolution in the treatment process.     

Self-representing dreams

SUMMARY

Certain dreams are particularly striking for the way they represent themselves and the manner in which they are told within a psychotherapeutic relationship. Within such a dream is contained a picture of the dream's function and significance as part of the transaction between patient and psychotherapist. This phenomenon illustrates the nature and function of unconscious phantasy, the relations that hold between phantasy and mechanisms of defence, and the manifestations of phantasy within the transference.

Three examples are given of self-representing dreams which have been reported and re-enacted by trainee psychiatrists in psychotherapy supervision.     

Analytic process and dreaming about analysis

Dreams about the analytic session feature a manifest content in which the analytic setting is subject to distortion while the analyst appears undisguised. Such dreams are a consistent yet infrequent occurrence in most analyses. Their specificity consists in never reproducing the material conditions of the analysis as such. This paper puts forward the following hypothesis: dreams about the session relate to some aspects of the analyst's activity. In this sense, such dreams are indicative of the transference neurosis, prefiguring transference resistances to the analytic elaboration of key conflicts. The parts taken by the patient and by the analyst are discussed in terms of their ability to signal a deepening of the analysis.     

The unwelcome child and his dreams: reconceptualization of dreaming in trauma

Based on the concepts of Sándor Ferenczi on trauma and vincularity, the author examines the operation of the mechanisms of dreaming in the processing of early traumatic situations and their clinical utilization. The difference is established between dreams of “repetition”, which lack dream imagery and contain a great amount of anguish, consisting of bodily sensations which may last on awakening, and the “secondary dream” with imagery, into which the first type can be transformed when the capacity of the psychic apparatus to process the traumatic situation is increased through therapeutic work. This “secondarization” of the repetitive dream has a traumatolytic effect, allowing the patient to reach psychoanalytically the mechanisms and mental states prevailing in the traumatic situation, through the mechanism of dream autorepresentation described by Silberer. In some cases, as illustrated in the clinical material, it is possible to anticipate the event of episodes of somatic disease before they become clinically evident.?The detailed analysis of dreams in patients with these characteristics is presented and discussed.     

Träume erzählen und die Übertragung

Zusammenfassung. Der Umgang mit Tr?umen in der psychoanalytischen Behandlung ist seit Freuds fundamentalen theoretischen und technischen Schriften zur Traumdeutung weitgehend unver?ndert geblieben. Er ist durch traumzentrierte Assoziationen und ihre Deutung in Hinblick auf Trauminhalt und übertragung gepr?gt. Im Kontext der heutigen, beziehungsorientierten Behandlungstechnik wirkt dieses Vorgehen wie ein Fremdk?rper, der eine zus?tzliche Integrationsaufgabe schafft und zum Kristallisationspunkt von Widerst?nden werden kann. Diese Arbeit betont die Bedeutung, die das Erz?hlen von Tr?umen als Geschehen in der aktuellen analytischen Beziehung hat, und gelangt zu der Konsequenz, Tr?ume im Rahmen der interaktionellen gegenw?rtigen Behandlungstechnik gleichartig wie alle anderen Einf?lle in der Behandlungsstunde zu handhaben, d. h. ihre Bedeutung als unbewu?te Aussagen im Proze? der analytischen Beziehung in das Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit zu rücken. Die leitenden Fragen der Beziehungsanalyse von Tr?umen sind: Warum erz?hlt der Analysand an dieser Stelle der Begegnung gerade einen Traum, und warum erz?hlt er diesen Traum und nicht einen anderen?

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Telling dreams and the transference. The interactional function of dream reports as free associations

Summary. Since Freud's Dream Interpretation and his additional writings on the analysis of dreams, technique of handling a dream report within the analytic session has nearly been unchanged. It is characterized by dream centered associations and their interpretation in regard to dream contents and to transference. This approach constitutes an alien element within contemporary interactional psychoanalytic technique and tends to provoke resistances in the analytic dialogue. This article stresses the function of reporting of dreams during the session in respect to the interactional process. It comes to the conclusion that sufficient attention should be drawn to interactional analysis of dream reporting following the questions: Why does the patient at this point of the process tell a dream, and why does he tell this very dream instead of another?

     

Reflections on the self state dream

Self psychologists contend that patients with narcissistic personality disorders have dreams which cannot be understood in terms of current psychoanalytic dream theory and that these dreams, called self state dreams, have a different origin and structure. The manifest content of these dreams is said to reveal the reactions of healthy sectors of the psyche to disturbing changes in the condition of the self. Self psychologists are said to be able to understand these dreams directly, without the patients' associations, as portrayals of the dreamers' dread of threats to the integrity of the self. The authors raise questions about these contentions. They conclude that the self state dream will remain a dubious concept until a more extensive psychology of dreaming is provided by self psychologists.     

Daimonic elements in early trauma

This paper explores some of the 'daimonic' elements of unconscious mentation that emerge both in dreams and in the transference/countertransference field with early-trauma patients and illustrates these with an extended clinical example. An archaic and typical (archetypal) 'trauma complex' is articulated (with diagram) as a bi-polar structure consisting of divine child protected and/or persecuted by an inner 'guardian angel'. Sources of this structure and its mythological inner objects are traced to trauma at the stage of what Winnicott calls 'unintegration' and to flooding by disintegration anxiety at a time before nascent ego-structure has formed. In an extended case example, the author shows how the patient's traumatized innocence and desire for a new start, thwarted by self-attacking defences, pulls him into playing the inflated role of her guardian angel, leading to re-traumatization in the transference. Working through is seen as the necessary disillusionment and humanization of these daimonic structures as they are projected, suffered, and transmuted by the analytic partners in the stormy process of psychotherapy.     

Perverse dreams and dreams of perversion

This paper (1) posits the occurrence of perverse dreams as a type of mental phenomenon in the constellation of perverse processes; (2) considers manifest dreams of frank perversion as a type of perverse dream within the class of perverse dreams as a whole; (3) relates the subtype of perverse dreams without manifest perversions to the occurrence of perverse defenses and the development of a perverse transference; and (4) suggests that consideration to perverse dreams in the psychoanalytic process finds application in identifying and differentiating perverse defenses from neurotic and other characterologic patterns; in identifying and tracing the vicissitudes of difficult perverse transference-countertransference constellations; and in furthering perverse patients' recognition and understanding of particularly troublesome and seemingly intractable issues in their psychic makeup. Clinical material illustrates perverse dreams and their usefulness in the often arduous process of analyzing perverse defenses.