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It is advisable to revert to the patient's dream over and over again – elaboration 1, 2, 3 … n; but not simply as dreams to be interpreted and related to a stimulus. They must be related to the dream-work that the stimulus has stimulated. How is this to be done? It may be easiest with the psychotic patient, for with him there is more chance of being able to see the stimulus, i.e. the consulting room scene itself, and his dream-work reaction to that situation. In particular it would seem necessary at first to make a distinction between α and projective identification – or at least to show that ‘excessive projective identification’ means projective identification to the exclusion of other methods of dream-work-α. The methods of dream-work-α are not the same as those of dream-work which is related to interpretation of dreams, but are the reciprocal or dream-work and are related to the capacity to dream, i.e. to transform into dream, events that are grasped only on a rational, conscious level. In this way α is the reciprocal of dream-work. Furthermore, it suggests that the element of ‘resistance’ in dream-work, as elucidated by Freud, is a compound of two elements: resistance, as described by Freud; and a felt need to convert the conscious rational experience into dream, rather than a felt need to convert the dream into conscious rational experience. The ‘felt need’ is very important; if it is not given due significance and weight, the true dis-ease of the patient is being neglected; it is obscured by the analyst's insistence on interpretation of the dream.