A significant "dream within a dream"

This brief clinical note is an attempt to clarify Freud's remarks regarding the significance of real occurrences of the "dream within a dream". There is affirmation of the reality of an actual event in the manifest dream (the "tickling" in adolescence). Certain representations regarding real events are alluded to in the manifest dream and are confirmed by the latent dream thoughts (the underlying homosexual theme involving the patient's mother and herself). Within the ongoing transference neurosis, a new understanding led this patient to experience intense sexual affects which were recalled for the first time during the course of an analytic session. The analyst's attention to this "dream within a dream" led to a facilitating active interpretation of the repressed sexual feelings. At the same time it was possible to observe a developmental arrest which had interfered with the consolidation of the patient's adolescent maturation begin to be undone by interpretation. The process of disengaging the patient from her unconscious bond with her mother (the undoing of the negative oedipal involvement) had been set in motion. The "dream within a dream" seems to represent a special defensive effort of the dream work to encapsulate the memory of one or more related actual events and the intense affects associated with them--affects whose pressure for discharge threaten to arouse the sleeper. The form the dream assumes is related to its hidden sexual origins and engages the active participation of both patient and analyst.     

Personality,dream content and dream coping style

One hundred and thirty Ss completed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and a Dream Analysis Questionnaire (DAQ), based on retrospective recall. Differential dream content was self-rated on three parameters: frequency, duration and intensity. Factor analyses identified three specific dimensions of dreaming: ‘Personal Avoidance’, ‘Eroticism’ and ‘Adventuresomeness’. It was clear that, on the frequency and image-intensity categories, dream content related overwhelmingly to Neuroticism. Personality , as measured, was clearly related to the salience (e.g. clarity of imagery, emotionality) of dreams. Given the specificity of dream content, the results suggest the presence of a person-specific coping style, primarily affective in nature. The findings are discussed in light of the continuum or parallel model of the dream-waking cycle. Implications for the cognitive modification of aberrant dream images or fantasy processes are briefly reviewed.     

The common mirror dream, dreamer, and the dream mirror

From the widely diverse category of so-called mirror dreams, we have differentiated the most frequent, which we have designated the common mirror dream (CMD). It is one in which the dreamer at some point looks into a mirror and reports seeing himself, a part of himself or a distorted though recognizable version of himself. Mirror dreams, including CMDs, are distinctly uncommon. Every dreamer of CMDs in our series had felt enjoined by the mother (in most cases with the father's collusion) not to see and regard her clearly and not to be an accurately reflecting mirror for her. The intensity with which the maternal injunction against accurate visual perception and evaluation was feared was an important distinguishing feature in our patients with CMDs. The essence of the CMD has been hypothesized to be a reciprocal, reverberating, visual-exhibitionistic dyad representative of the mother-child relationship. The dream mirror may represent the wish that the analyst-mother counter a feared parental injunction against accurate visual perception and evaluation so as to correct the distorted perceptions of self and objects and provide visual affirmation of the value and integrity of the self-representation. For some patients, defense against the dangers of castration and loss of maternal love was accomplished by the mirror mechanisms of magically transforming images in the mirror, the ease of creating illusion in the mirror, and a fetishistic mechanism of visually reintrojecting a phallic symbol from the mirror. Our data failed to confirm many of the hypotheses of previous contributors as to specific symbolic meanings of the dream mirror. More relevant than the symbolism of the dream mirror are the many functions of the dream mirror for the dreamer. These are analyzed and discussed.     

Draw me a dream

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy -     

不再是梦

皿..8 d﹁。山三曾经有个夜晚我梦见自己孤单一人心比沙土沉苦比石头重生活的无奈和凄楚像大锤击碎了我的心重拾那些心的碎片组合成两个字绝望忽然有一天一个柔和的声音春风一样舒心百合一样美丽清泉一样甜润是夜行人的光是孤儿的母亲是绝望者的救星是孤苦人的知音啊，那是天上     

The manifest dream in psychoanalysis: a clarification

Controversies about the value of the manifest dream in psychoanalysis are usually a matter of semantics. The author concludes that two clinically meaningful questions about the manifest dream can be asked: Is the patient's report of a dream useful in formulating an interpretation if no formal associations to the dream elements are given? Inasmuch as such reports always include some kind of associations, and the analyst always possesses considerable knowledge about the patient, the answer to this question would seem to be "Yes, at least at times." In what ways can the manifest dream contribute to our understanding of the dream and the dreamer? Both the literature and clinical experience indicate that there are many ways; these are summarized in an appendix. One approach, the direct decoding of manifest dream elements, is discussed in some detail. Several examples of the undisguised appearance of memories of childhood traumatic experiences in the manifest dream are presented.     

A parapraxis in a dream

When a parapraxis is put on display in a dream, one can only wonder what service the willful mistake is rendering to resourceful dream work. Freud taught us that anything that appears in the manifest content of a dream may well be a disguise or a distortion of a subject that originally made an anxiety-provoking, and hence short-lived, first appearance in latent dream thoughts. Dreams in dreams and jokes in dreams have been examined from this perspective (Mahon 2002a, 2002b), and this paper focuses on the appearance and meaning of a parapraxis in a dream, with the argument that seemingly casual "mistakes" are highlighted in the manifest display to cover up some latent, much more deliberate subject matter.     

Francisco de Enzinas,a Reformationminded humanist with a vernacular dream

Abstract

In sixteenth-century Western Europe there was widespread debate as to whether it was permissible, or even desirable, that the laity read the Bible in the vernacular and whether the Bible might be translated into various national languages. Under the influence of the humanistic ideas of Desiderius Erasmus, several young Spaniards came to Leuven to complete their studies, one of whom was the Spanish humanist, Francisco de Enzinas, whose chief objective was to provide a Spanish translation of Scripture. This article will show that in an eventful life, but cut short, and during which he eventually did admit allegiance to the Reformation, Enzinas was only able to partially achieve this goal. In 1543 he published a Spanish translation of the New Testament and some books of the Old Testament.     

A poem and a dream

Recently, a journalist in analysis had a dream that stimulated the writing of a poem, the two psychic products occurring no more than a few hours apart. Since the analysand had copious free associations to both products, believing both to be culled from the same unconscious raw material, an interesting study of an act of aesthetic creation almost in statu nascendi became possible. A concept called poem work is entertained in this paper and is compared and contrasted with the classical psychoanalytic concept of dream work, allowing some unanswerable questions to be posed and discussed in regard to the formal constitutive elements of poetry.