Discussion

AS I read Dr. Gershman's paper, I found myself in agreement with many of his basic assumptions about the nature and use of dreams. Among the outstanding elements which he emphasizes are: the idiosyncratic meaning of symbols, the importance of the interaction between patient and therapist in the use of dream data, the importance of affect, and his general statement that while “the dream is a valuable instrument,” its value depends on how we use it.

The comments to follow will be elaboration, further emphasis, some modification, some disagreement concerning these points and some brief additional considerations about dreams.

Dr. Gershman eschews a universal dictionary of symbols and stresses their idiosyncratic nature. Here we are in full agreement. I should like, however, to add a reminder about the occurrence of common symbols. As products of the same culture, individuals share certain social referrents, a fact well set forth in your Association's journal by Montague Ullman years ago under the title, “The Social Roots of the Dream.”’ As a shared symbol, for example, a pig in the dreams of different radical members of our culture might represent a policeman; in the dreams of many contemporary women it might represent a male chauvinist. Idiosyncratically, however, one of these patients might be dreaming about revulsion, revulsion as an emotion once specifically experienced on viewing a pig sty. Either the cultural or personal context could then be the referrent. Furthermore, the two might blend. The individual dreaming about the pig, for example, might be responding in sleep with the disgust born of an experience from earlier years, but now directed against a current culturally detested political object, a policeman; or against a socially detested, currently dominating man, genus: male chauvinist pig. Cultural and idiosyncratic referrents are both significant and we must often depend on the patient to discover even his particular cultural referrent.

Dr. Gershman remarks t