You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1949, Vol. XVIII, p. 419.
Case material is taken from the history of a young lady who had four hypomanic attacks during her analysis. Each was preceded by a blank dream. Before each episode she had lunch and had gone shopping with a mother figure. In the analytic hour she had a blissful mood of erotic absorption. That night she had an orgasm with a blank dream. She awoke with a hypomania. In her clear periods she had dreams in which young men in bed with her turned into her mother. During the hypomania men played a great part, but her mother was taboo as a topic for analysis.
The blank herald dream is to be interpreted not only as a dream of oral satisfaction of fusion with the mother at the breast, but also as picturing most lucidly the fulfilment of the wish to sleep. The patient's hypomanic attacks were like manifest dreams which denied the latent dream thoughts of the day's residual. Features of the manic are compared to mechanisms that are found in dreams. The elated mood of the manic and his happy dreams were long ago shown to hide death wishes or thoughts of one's death. The dreams of romping and playing resemble the innocent games of the hypomanic. Dreams with endless details are compared to the variety of content found in a typical flight of ideas. After discussing varieties of sleep and wakefulness and dreams, mania may be compared to sleep if the kind of sleep is specified.
Both sleep and mania are the result of an intrapsychic fusion with the breast at nursing, but stupor alone reproduces the infant's sound sleep. Elation repeats the wish-fulfilling dreaming sleep of an older child. This special sleep-equivalent is guarded by a censorship that is created to employ the defence mechanism of denial—of insight—and to prevent emotional acceptance.