≪All Dreams are wish Fulfilments≫: Is this Still a Tenable Thesis Today?

In a previous contribution on ≪the place of the dream≫ (Conrotto, 2000b), I examined the position of dreams in successive psychoanalytic models, from those of Freud's first and second topography to those of Bion, Winnicott and their derivatives, which — for example, the ≪field≫ model — I considered could all be interpreted as implications of the second topography and the second drive theory. It seemed to me that the dream model of the first topography — as presented, in particular, in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1899) — identifies the paradigm of functioning of the psychical apparatus, as well as of the psychopathology of the neuroses and of the analytic setting. On the other hand, in the more recent models, which can in my view be understood as implied by the second topography, dreams occupy a more secondary and less central position not only in terms of their use in clinical practice but also as regards the consistency of the mechanisms of their functioning with the models of the psychical apparatus, with the theories adduced to explain psychopathological organizations and with theories of the analytic relationship.

For example, the pathologies deemed accessible to analysis, albeit with difficulty, include those held by Bion (1962, 1965, 1967) to be characterized by the incapacity to dream — that is, to produce dreams in the proper sense of the word — on account of a grave inadequacy of the α-function, so that at most nightmares are possible.1 As regards the theory of psychic functioning, Freud had already asserted in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) that the primary psychic function prior to the establishment of the pleasure principle was to free the psychical apparatus from stimuli and, secondarily, to bind these stimuli in order to control them; he concluded that the pleasure principle, as the main psychical ≪tendency≫, was indeed subject to the demands of the death drive.2 Later, with the introduction of the second topography, he des