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From the start the idea of the dream screen as a flat projection screen similar to a cinema screen, and representing the breast, seemed to Lewin to be too simple. He thought that the dream screen must clearly be related (a) to the hypnagogic and hypnopompic phenomena described by Isakower—typically the approach to the beginning sleeper of a large, dark, round mass which produces corrugated
feelings in the mouth and skin accompanied by a loss of ego-boundaries, and (b) to so-called blank dreams.
The visual elements of the Isakower phenomena, which also represent breast experiences, may be equated with the visual elements of the dream screen. The apparent contradiction between the flatness and the roundness is resolved if one remembers what the baby's perception of the breast must be. Then the flatness can be understood as the flatness of a perceived segment of an enormously curved body.
Blank dreams (of which there is a whole class) represent similar experiences to those of the Isakower phenomena, only here the sharp visual images, or screen proper, are in abeyance. In some of these it is the memory-traces of very early falling asleep which give the formless, elusive affect. These earlier experiences may also be portrayed modified by later experience of the breast. Equally originally non-visual elements may come to be represented pictorially.
Clearly the term 'dream screen' is inadequate if it is extended to cover too many such phenomena. Besides, the blending of the original 'flat' image with later experiences means that the screen, or the dream as a whole, may come to be represented by solid articles, experienced in connection with oral satisfactions either during the suckling period or later—e.g. the finger, rubber, or glass. Again, for the original 'screen' of the breast may be substituted a later 'screen' or similar object representing, say, the abdominal wall, this substitution being the source of many fantasies of gnawing through the abdominal wall and