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Murderous super-ego: therefore avoidance of the depressive positions is achieved by not dreaming, or by dreaming with precautions, e.g. of being with the analyst or, like Y, only allowing the dream to develop when he knows someone is there; instead of quietening down when his mother arrives, his dream appears to become more vivid and worse. It also explains why X seems to cling so tenaciously to my badness in the session.
| First Stage | |
| a. No dreams (in the ordinary sense of night-time phenomena). | b. Dreams suppressed and has hallucinations as a substitute. These hallucinations are excretory, projective. |
| Second Stage | |
| a. No dreams. | b. Dreams suppressed but has hallucinations as a substitute. These are intended to be introjectory, but because of fear of the superego and, paradoxically, creating the super-ego by synthesis, it is not rewarding as the true dream would be, and in any case the hallucination cannot yield the free associations etc. which are what make a true dream yield its meaning. So: no free associations and no development of personality is possible. The patient cannot get sustenance from a hallucination. |
| Third Stage | |
| a. Dreams reported. No free associations and not easily distinguishable from hallucinations – “I was standing at the window as usual.” Dream seems to be excretory in function. | b. Confusion. Projective identification – splitting almost exclusively with ‘dreaming the session’. That is to say, the session is dreamed; my interpretations and all other events of which he is aware, are not seen, listened to, heard in the ordinary way but are subjected to ‘inaccessible-ization’. Thus: train stuck in tunnel – two chairs and a three-piece suite – a stool-chair. Mostly excretory to deal with the ego qualities of the interpretations by dispersal. |
| Fourth Stage | |
| a. Dreams, more frequent but lacking associations and mostly excretory – arm drops off when he gives a traffic signal, thus indicating uselessness of attempting to warn because parts of the body persist in wantin |