Correspondence

Dear Sir,

Towards the end of her second year of analysis and at the beginning of the 361st analytic session, a patient discussed a dream she dreamt the previous night. Not only did this dream stimulate my interest to understand the meaning of latent content but also made me wonder how frequently such dreams occur during analytic treatment. My curiosity was influenced by similarities between this patient's dream, Freud's personal dream, 'Dissecting My Own Pelvis' (1900), and a dream reported by Yazmajian (1968). My patient presented her dream as follows:

Between my eyes and nose I picked a hole very close to my eye and then I looked in. I could see red fleshy protuberances, and large red veins, and cartilages and blood. Also, there was a white tube, it was dripping something. It was like I was looking at the back of my ear. My nose hurt in the dream and I had pain in the dream.

Her initial response to the dream was as follows: 'It seems to me that during analysis one should also get a good look at the insides of one's body. That's an important part of learning about yourself.' These comments were followed by many fruitful associations that related to numerous body image fantasies.

The content of the first part of Freud's dream of 'Dissecting My Own Pelvis' is as follows: 'Old Brücke must have set me some task; strangely enough, it related to a dissection of the lower part of my own body, my pelvis and legs, which I saw before me as though in the dissecting-room, but without noticing their absence in myself and also without a trace of any gruesome feeling. Louise N. was standing beside me and doing the work with me. The pelvis had been eviscerated, and it was visible now in its superior, now in its inferior, aspect, the two being mixed together. Thick flesh-coloured protuberances (which, in the dream itself, made me think of haemorrhoids) could be seen.' His response to this part of the dream was: 'The task which was imposed on me i