The first of the two notes is an analysis of two very similar dreams, one reported by a patient, the other recorded in a poem by Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837). The central theme of both is the moon falling out of the sky. Material, clinical in one case, literary and biographical in the other, is presented to show that in each the moon represented an idealized internal object and its falling out of the sky disillusionment and the collapse of a defensive 'secondary construction' based on illusion and idealization. The relationship of the anxiety inherent in both dreams to castration anxiety is discussed.

The material presented in the first note is used to provide illustrative examples for the second, which considers the relationship between pathological idealization, with its attendant risk of pathological disillusion, and illusion and disillusion as normal processes playing an essential