Dreams that mirror the session

Abstract

Dreams in which the analyst appears undisguised almost always depict violations of the setting. Often experienced as special, epiphanic moments, they give a glimpse of an intense, emotional reaction to traumatogenic or otherwise significant events that have occurred during the session or in the most recent previous ones. Probably, the essential aspect of these dreams can be found in the 'form of their content'. This may be paralleled by the narrative technique of mise en abyme or mirror-text. The dream appears as a story within the main story and the scene of the analysis is reflected anti-illusionistically. The fictional structure of the setting is emphasized. Its theatrical self-consciousness quality is revealed at its best. The author postulates that the transformative therapeutic value of these dreams derives from denouncing the referential illusion of 'concrete reality' and of 'what really happened'. For the analysand, they are an effective (i.e. emotionally intense) opportunity to discover the spatial articulations and the staggering refractions of the inside/outside, the textual/extra-textual, the psychic reality/material reality. In the continual comings and goings from one term to another, the work of symbolization is reactivated and the subject is constructed. Dreams that mirror the session, from this point of view, provide a model for conceptualizing the analytic work, and their significance goes beyond the specific phenomena referred to. A clinical case is given, in which some of one patient's dreams are considered as they occurred over a short period. In one of them, the dream-within-a-dream phenomenon is present.

Analytic process and dreaming about analysis

“…This gives a depth of field to the development of the transference. Such a dimension is underlined by Civitarese (, p. 705) who foregrounds its paradoxical aspect. On the one hand, there is something that is ‘not true’ insofar as it is a dream; on the other hand, the dream allows one to see the reality of what appears illusory yet fundamental in the relationship with the analyst as something that belongs to the dreamer, precisely because the dreamer becomes the narrator of this process (Braunschweig and Fain, , p. 33).…”

“…Civitarese () highlights a variety of effects of the dream about the session on the economics of the analytic relation and the dynamic status of the patient. The first effect consists in decreasing the pressure of the superego tied to the responsibility of the drive‐related dynamic, thus eliciting its easier recognition under the veil of distortion.…”

“…Furthermore, thanks to its link with a traumatic nucleus, this dream will not fall into the unconsciousness of sleep as a successful dream so that its recounting will then be possible. Civitarese (2006) highlights a variety of effects of the dream about the session on the economics of the analytic relation and the dynamic status of the patient. The first effect consists in decreasing the pressure of the superego tied to the responsibility of the drive-related dynamic, thus eliciting its easier recognition under the veil of distortion.…”

Immersion versus interactivity and analytic field

“…But this narrative framework is only the last of a series of vertiginous duplications en abyme : the same story is repeated somehow in Alessia’s biography, in the vicissitudes of her current life, in the transference, in the myth of Arachne’s competition with Athena ( mythos =thread! ), and lastly, indeed, in the subject chosen by Arachne for her woven text (Civitarese, 2006).…”

Letters to the Editors

“…On p. 719 of Civitarese (2006), some text was repeated. In the fi rst paragraph, the text beginning 'but more' on line 12, and ending '"real event"' on line 16 should be deleted.…”