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This volume consists of papers and discussions presented at “A Symposium on Dreams” sponsored by the Society of Medical Analysts in 1959. Sixteen contributors from the principal American psychoanalytic schools, namely, New York Psychoanalytic, William Allanson White, New York School for Psychiatry, American Institute for Psychoanalysis, and Society of Medical Psychoanalysts, are represented in this endeavor. As a result, this book offers an excellent opportunity to become informed about the process of dream interpretation from various analytic orientations.
The editor offers a thorough, concise and objective survey of the history of psychoanalytic facts and theories. He emphasizes the current evolution of concepts concerning dreams. Some salient facts that emerged are: Freud was correct in his inference that dreams are the best road to knowledge of psychic processes which occur outside of awareness; dream interpretation is indispensable to the understanding of the patient and his emotional problems; Freud's assumption of wish fulfillment has not been and cannot be subjected to observational test; theoretical and electro-physiological evidence points to an arousal function of the dream; some process other than motivated repression plays an important role in the psychic processes and psychophysiology of dreams; greater emphasis has to be placed on the manifest content of the dream; problem-solving characteristic of the dream has received considerable attention as one of the adaptive functions of the dream.
The Symposium papers published in this volume are divided into two parts—the first,
dealing with the psychophysiology of dreaming and the pathophysiology of mental processes in cerebrally diseased individuals, and the second part dealing with the clinical presentation of psychoanalytic data.
In the first section, Kleitman presents “The Psysiology of Dreaming” which is the first scientific attempt to integrate the brain and mental processes. His original work opened up a