The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 23, 1954, No. 4: Bertram D. Lewin. 'Sleep, Narcissistic Neurosis, and the Analytic Situation.'

Lewin attempts to formulate first ecstasy, hypomania and depression, then the analytic situation, in terms of the metapsychology of the dream.

He has already interpreted both ecstasy and blank dreams in terms of the wish for fusion with the breast of the satiated nursling. Since in Freud's formulation dreaming is the exception to the narcissism of sleep, Lewin argues that the nearer a dream is to a blank dream the fewer are the impurities in the narcissism. Ecstasy and the blank dream may therefore be equated metapsychologically. But the sense of reality in ecstasy is similar to that in dreams in general. Since in ecstasy it comes from the energic cathexis of condensed oral experiences, the origin of the sense of reality in dreams may therefore have been oversimplified by Freud when he attributed it to the cathexis of visual memory-traces; the oldest oral elements may always contribute.

Blank dreams may occur at the conclusion of a period of ecstasy and usher in a period of hypomania. The same narcissistic wish as blank dreams and ecstasy express must therefore persist into hypomania. Hypomania may therefore be likened to that part of the manifest content of a dream which denies the latent thought. The euphoria is in fact derived from the wish, but its cathexis is displaced to later (mainly motor) memory-traces and the regression is disguised in the manifest picture.

In depression the first step is a similar narcissistic regression. This is equally true of toxic and psychogenic depressions, since the toxin induces a state resembling sleep. In depression, however, the manifest picture is one of blatant unpleasure which Lewin equates with painful weaning and waking. The super-ego is the derivative not only of the father, but of all early wakers, such as light and noise. In depression wish for sleep is expressed by the ego which hears the call but fails to respond.

Lewin next turns his attention to the analytic situation. With free-association the patient enter