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In their article Computer simulation of a model of neurotic defence processes, Ulrich Moser and Ilka von Zeppelin (Moser, 1969; von Zeppelin and Moser, 1973) suspended the traditional interpretative access to dreams and undertook a descriptive coding approach. They thus began to formulate models for the creation and transformation of dreams (Moser and von Zeppelin, 1991, 1996). With Thomas Stompe in the present book (Chapter 3), this approach is extended to the phenomenon of delusions. Here Moser, emeritus professor of psychology and clinical psychology at Zurich University, and a psychoanalyst of the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society/IPA, summarizes this further stage of his research that uses precise methods for coding phantasies. I will discuss this in more detail below, and begin by just indicating a few important premises. Moser conceives dreams and delusions to be virtual micro-worlds. They occur mainly in (linguistic) images and linguistic scenarios. These are shaped by affects. They are partly overlain by thoughts and reflections. In the images, the subject moves across times, places and relations. Since Moser conceives the imagistic worlds of dreams and delusions as a form of simulation and transformation of inner self-experience, they represent models for processes of change. They primarily reflect the human being's processes of inner change. This makes them and their study extremely interesting for modern research in psychotherapy.
The technique and interpretation of coding are conveyed to the reader. Coding was developed by Moser and Zeppelin, and validated by Döll-Hentschker (2008), as well as exemplified by dream sequences from one situation to another in psychoanalyses. They then developed the procedure correspondingly for delusions. The categories of the coding are the determination of the positional range, the temporal localization, the spatial localization, the spatial shift (leaving and entering), the situational sequence of the micro-world, the inter