Dreaming and Thinking

This book includes papers on the dream space and countertransference, the dream space, the analytic situation and eating disorders, dreams of borderline patients and the ‘oracle’ in dreams: the past and the future in the present.

Reviews & Endorsements

“Distilled in this little book is a great deal of contemporary wisdom regarding the importance of dreams in clinical practice, written and given as lectures by psychoanalysts of the British Society. The devotion and intelligence applied to deepening our understanding of the unconscious makes for rewarding reading.”

Paul Williams PhD, Joint Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Psychoanalysis

“At the core of the book lies an exploration of the connections between dreaming and thinking, and the way in which dreams may provide the analyst’s best clues concerning their patients’ states of mind. The varied contributions to chapters contained in this volume extend further the perception that the interpretation of dreams allows access to a theory of mind, to the ways in which analysands conceive their experiences of their inner world of thoughts and feelings. It is crucial for the analyst, during a session, to differentiate conceptually and clinically between different types of mental processes. An understanding of the type of mental constructs presented by patients – i.e. the quality, content or function of their dreams, daydreams, thoughts or actions – at each moment in an analytic session – is an important means of identifying the structure of their psychic states. In each of the chapters the author crucially links dreams to the transference, so facilitating a deeper understanding of the analytic process itself.

In the past decade, there has been something of a renaissance in psychoanalysis of the privileging of dreams, not only as the “royal road” to the unconscious, but as a fundamental (perhaps the fundamental) function of the unconscious. Dreaming and Thinking brings together an unusually rich set of essays which illustrate a range of approaches to dream analysis in contemporary analytic practice. This collection, drawn from public lectures delivered by members of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, is remarkable both for the clarity of thinking and the freedom from analytic jargon and ideology demonstrated by the authors.”

Thomas Ogden, M.D.
Member, International Psychoanalytical Association
Supervising and Training Analyst, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California

“This clever and modest book about current views of dreams is striking because it manages to convey so much in just a few pages, without losing depth of thought or resorting to traditional psychoanalytical jargon. It focuses on what is really essential without being partisan to any specific school.

The essays clarify the essence of the psychoanalytical approach, whereby the analyst renders the mental scenarios of our emotional life meaningful, and re-articulates meanings from different symbolic levels, thus opening up new possibilities for the patient.

This book is essential reading for both analysts and academics interested in present day psychoanalysis.”

Elias M. da Rocha Barros
Editor for Latin America of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis
Supervising and Training Analyst, Brazilian Psycho-Analytical Society of São Paulo