Saturday 4th & Sunday 5th State Library of NSW Macquarie Street, Sydney

In this paper I will discuss the clinical use of dreams in psychotherapy: including the initial dream, dream series, and recurrent images and symbols in dreams, and the analytic session as a form of dreaming activity.

I will discuss how Bion sees the intersubjective space of therapy as an analytic field in which the analyst and patient ‘dream’ together. Here I will draw on Bion’s use of reverie, how images, themes, narratives emerge in the analytic space.

Another vital concept is that of the initial dream, the ways in which the first dream a patient brings to therapy can indicate, in symbolic form, the heart of the issue bringing the patient into therapy. Dreams are multivalent, although often opaque, revealing layers of meaning only over time.

This theme will weave its way throughout a historical overview of the meaning of dreams, including Freud’s initial dream, ‘Irma’s needle’, Jung’s two seminal dreams, and Hobson’s understanding of the initial dream of a patient ‘Sam’. I will also draw on Jung’s Red Book.