The Role of the Dream in the Analysis of a Latency Child

In this paper I have tried to illustrate, from the analysis of a latency girl who was heavily burdened by the pressures of her inner urgencies, how the dream not only provided a "safety valve" for the discharge of her excessive excitations, but also a means through which to substitute reflective thought for impulsive action. When, especially in the early stages of treatment, her ego could maintain a sufficient margin of distance from her instinctual strivings to enable her to stand apart from herself, as it were, and through the dream medium to glimpse some understanding of what heretofore had been bewildering forces beyond her control, her relief was enormous. I have selected such fragments from her analysis as dealt with her acute castration complex, and have tried to show how, as her ego gained increasing relief from her instinctual urgencies, the dream material gradually faded from the analysis, to reappear with her renewed tensions at prepuberty.

This patient was one among those latency children whose dream material has played a dominant role in the analytic process, and who comprise the minority of those whom I have treated. All of these children experienced considerable pressure from their instinctual strivings, although not always to the same degree as did this little girl, and sometimes only in certain stages of their analyses, as impulses would force their way to the surface, either as the result of stimulation from analytic interpretation, or from experiences encountered outside the analysis. In general, however, it has seemed to me that their use of dream material has tended to coincide with these periods of increased pressure. I would add that within this context of ego-id intimacy, there obviously must be sufficient balance of energies for the ego to experience the processes of the id and yet to maintain that margin of distance which allows for the secondary-process functions of observation and reflection; otherwise the result will be either withdrawal and contraction, or too massive and immediate discharge through action.