[Undated - 1960]: Dream-Work-α. Cogitations

To what extent is myth-making an essential function of α? It may be that the sense impression has to be transformed to make it suitable material for dream-thought, but that it is the function of dream-thought to use the material put at its disposal by α, the units of dream-thoughts so to speak, in order to produce myths.

Myths must be defined; they must be communicable and have some of the qualities of common sense – one might call them ‘common non-sense’.

The episode of the rain storm has emerged at different times in fragments. Rain – without a raincoat – taking the only taxi – pneumonia feared for me – self in rain at my house.

Then there was his account of the baby with a horn on its nose – some cowl on its head – his wife and blood – shambles.

There was his dream of his other self. This was coherent and might be an account of what I had said to him in a session. If so, it is almost accurate, but I am his other self and it is called a dream.

What do I know about all this? Virtually nothing. It is hardly even true to say that I know he said it, because although I was present and heard him talking and saw him lying on the couch, there is little I can do to digest it. In other words, I do not know what took place – I suspect. The conditions do not exist for me to have the experience of knowing, but the conditions do exist for me to be suspicious. I can only pile one hypothesis on another. Taking the view that I need to be able to operate α, I find in fact that I cannot.

The obvious explanation is that I know of no theory and can find no selected fact that makes the facts cohere. What theories are there? The following occur to me:

1. He is aware of reality and delivers splitting attacks on it so that the elements appear as elements.

2. These elements are scattered in time.

3. The elements are sometimes conjoined, e.g. my house and my being wet through. But these elements were not thus joined in the episode.