The child dream and the child transference

This paper explores the symbolic meaning of dreams in which children appear with special attention to the way children in dreams symbolize the self, particularly the dependent and developing self. It is suggested that patients' growth in analysis can be monitored by observing what happens to the children in their dreams. This paper also explores the vicissitudes of the child transference, in which the patient treats the analyst as a child. An analysis is described in which the child dream and the child transference played an important role in elucidating the patient's neurotic behaviors. The author contends that the child dream and the child transference are common and clinically useful phenomena, especially important in the analysis of dependency conflicts. An additional thesis of this paper is that the child transference is most likely to be found in instances where a patient played a parental role with one of their parents during childhood.     

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?     

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.     

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.     

An early, on the borderline between dream and transference, unconscious fantasy of Freud on the psychoanalytic situation (1898). A contribution to psychoanalytic creativity

Taking 24 hours in the life of Freud, the author shows how significant the interplay of dream, day-dream, unconscious phantasy and transference can be in solving scientific problems. This is documented by using the correspondence between Freud and Fliess on March 9/10, 1898, by taking Freud's dream of a botanical monograph, his day-dream of a glaucoma operation, his remarks on the "real" course of the day, and segments of self-analysis.     

Object relations theory in clinical practice

This paper outlines the psychoanalytic techniques derived from ego psychology-object relations theory. It stresses the centrality of affects to interpretation and describes how the focus on dominant object relations in the transference modifies the economic, dynamic, and structural criteria for interpretation. Clinical examples illustrate this technique across a broad spectrum of psychopathology. The technique for genetic constructions and reconstructions in the transference is described, and this approach is contrasted with other object relations theories. Finally, the application of this approach to countertransference and dream analysis is summarized.     

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.     

Archetypal defenses in the clinical situation: a vignette

Critical moments along the path of an analysis are presented in order to illustrate how dreams portray archaic and typical (archetypal) defenses against the re-experience of unbearable affect as it emerges. Inner defensive 'objects' functioning as a 'self-care system' threaten to uproot, kill or destroy the connections between the dream ego and various images of vulnerability as these emerge in response to healing life events or transference feelings. Over a series of dreams, transformations within this self-care system are observed, ending in a final healing dream which marks the patient's achievement of a 'depressive position' in relation to her otherwise persecutory anxieties.     

The use of color for the secondary elaboration of the dream

Freud's term sekund?re Bearbeitung has been translated as both "secondary revision" and "secondary elaboration." In keeping with a distinction made by Silber (1973), the term secondary elaboration is used in this paper to indicate the process by which further dream modification occurs after dream recall in order to deepen the disguise of the manifest content for the analyst. Clinical cases are presented in an attempt to demonstrate the sole use of color for the alteration of dreams subsequent to their initial recall. Secondary elaboration in these cases is attributed to resistance to transference. Further, the clinical material indicates that the secondary elaboration simultaneously serves a communicative function.     

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?

     

Commentary on Paper by Françoise Davoine

Françoise Davoine sees madness as a research project involving the uncanny presence of ghosts arising from the realm of the transference as well as the “big” history of wider social catastrophes across the generations, in effect “cut-out” pieces of the unconscious. Madness is a rupture in the social link that needs repairing. The therapist is a coresearcher with the individual whose madness tells a story embedded in the heart of madness itself. Davoine presents her work with a woman who has a history of multiple psychiatric hospitalizations. She invites her patient to link up with and speak of that which formerly resided in the Lacanian Real, that is, the unsymbolized haunting absence of her mother who was tragically murdered by the Nazis. The therapist's dream becomes a bridge to this world of ghosts for both patient and therapist. The dream ushers in an enactment and a transference interpretation by the therapist, which leads to a disappearance of madness from the analytic stage. I attempt to apply the theories of Post Kleinians, as well as Harold Searles and Gaetano Benedetti, to help illuminate the processes of therapeutic action. Contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to dreams and a relational view of madness are also addressed.     

Freud's Irma dream and the origins of psychoanalysis

This paper investigates Freud's Irma dream as a response, in part, to the publication of Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1893-1895). As such, Freud's dream and associations reveal a great deal regarding the origins of psychoanalysis. The preamble to the dream reflects Freud's concern with the ground rules and boundaries of the psychotherapeutic technique that he was in the process of developing. This paper cites evidence for Freud's concerns regarding the consequences of alterations in these basic tenets. The Irma dream and Freud's associations also convey a deep and apparently unconscious concern within Freud in respect to the concept of transference, which he may have realized on some level had been used to defensively deny disturbing inputs by the therapist into the treatment situation and patient. The dream may be understood also as reflecting a deep sense of concern regarding unrecognized harmful effects of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Freud's concern that the treatment process might be more destructive than helpful. The curative aspects of psychotherapy are viewed in terms of action-discharge rather than insight. In all, this reanalysis of the Irma dream focuses on Freud's unconscious conflicts, fantasies, and anxieties at a time when he, along with Breuer, presented a burgeoning psychoanalytic treatment modality to the professional world.     

Changing psychic structure through treatment: criteria for change

The author outlines his clinical observations during the "middle game" of psychoanalysis, leading to recognition that structural change is taking place. "Middle game," "structure," process, and content are defined and critically discussed. Illustrative clinical vignettes are offered. The presentation emphasizes the importance of an active and resolving transference "struggle"; in addition, more traditionally noted criteria are briefly touched on, e.g., development of observing ego and treatment alliance, changes in dream function and communication, and the reviewing of the neurosis and transference during the termination phase as instances of mourning and working through. The concept of optimal psychobiological function in the service of a homeostatic principle is discussed.     

False‐self sensitivity to countertransference: Anatomy of a single session

This paper describes how a patient's sensitivity to the counter‐transference sparked a transference regression that generated insight about her core conflict: False‐Self compliance at the expense of her needs for love, emotional support, and nurturance.

My patient's regression was important, first, because it produced symptoms that dramatically illustrated to her how much self‐denial she was willing to exercise to feel needed by others. Previously, such insight had not been effective because of the extraordinary secondary gains of her behavior. This time was more successful because of the ego‐dystonic symptoms that developed, with intense shame and embarrassment. Second, the regression resulted in a transference dream that provided her with new insights into the anxiety she was warding off through False‐Self compliance to the narcissistic requirements of her parents.     

Aspects of nonperverse scopophilia within an analysis

This essay is intended to contribute to the increasing importance ascribed to scopophilia in modern psychoanalytic literature. The exceptional position of scopophilia is twofold: by virtue of its subdivisions, voyeurism and exhibitionism, it constitutes one of the two pairs of component drives recognized by Freund; and it informs one of the two major perceptual avenues that comprise communication in the analytic setting. A case is presented which shows how the psychic life of a female patient was dominated by a nonperverse scopophilia in a remarkable variety of ways, ranging from hyper-investment to inhibition and phobic curtailment. The case is equally noteworthy for the way in which these various phenomena were reenacted in the transference and in the particular visual character of the analytic scene; thus the patient's optical focal symbiosis and ophidiophobia are related to what I call the analyst's "retro presence."     

Dream actors in the theatre of memory: Their role in the psychoanalytic process2

The author notes that neuropsychological research has discovered the existence of two long‐term memory systems, namely declarative or explicit memory, which is conscious and autobiographical, and non‐declarative or implicit memory, which is neither conscious nor verbalisable. It is suggested that pre‐verbal and pre‐symbolic experience in the child's primary relations is stored in implicit memory, where it constitutes an unconscious nucleus of the self which is not repressed and which influences the person's affective, emotional, cognitive and sexual life even as an adult. In the analytic relationship this unconscious part can emerge essentially through certain modes of communication (tone of voice, rhythm and prosody of the voice, and structure and tempo of speech), which could be called the ‘musical dimension’ of the transference, and through dream representations. Besides work on the transference, the critical component of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis is stated to consist in work on dreams as pictographic and symbolic representations of implicit pre‐symbolic and pre‐verbal experiences. A case history is presented in which dream interpretation allowed some of a patient's early unconscious, non‐repressed experiences to be emotionally reconstructed and made thinkable even though they were not actually remembered.     

Dancing With the Unconscious: The Art of Psychoanalysis

This article examines psychoanalytic work as an art and uses the metaphor of dance between two unconscious minds to describe the rich creativity of mental life. Free association, transference/countertransference, and dreamwork are each discussed for their creative dimensions and their coupling in the cure. A compelling session with dream analysis of a transsexual patient is presented verbatim (along with the author's inner thoughts) to illustrate the art of dance that takes place between analyst and analysand.