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Eugene Mahon complements his three prior books, Rensal the Redbit (Mahon 1990), A Psychoanalytic Odyssey (Mahon 2014), and Bone Shop of the Heart (Mahon 2017), with a masterful contribution in Such Stuff as Dreams: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry. The first of his books is a fairy tale for children and adults alike that was reviewed as a poetic summary of his explorations on the psychoanalytic process (Balashova-Shamis 2017). The second book is a collection of essays representative of this scholarly work (Schwaber 2017). The third book directly portrayed Mahon's poetic capability (Schwaber 2019). Mahon's latest book is a second collection of formal papers focused on his unique contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of dreams.
One factor that makes this volume unique among the many psychoanalytic studies of dreams is Mahon's extensive experience writing about singular occurrences, which, he proposes, demonstrate the universality of dream work. Vividly portrayed jokes, dreams within dreams, parapraxes, poems, puns, the uncanny, tricks, and cartoons become instances of the dream work's special flourishes and flair. To Mahon, these phenomena represent extraordinary efforts to maintain the dreamer's sleep. Exploring the latent content surrounding these manifestations produces a bountiful yield for exploring the unconscious conflicts of the analysand. Mahon complements these pieces through expositions on broader aspects of dreaming, including its developmental aspects, its evolution through the stages of life, and its integration with affect and fantasy.