Clinical Approaches to Dreams1

Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau introduced the panel by commending the fact that every IPA Congress contains presentations on dreams in the analytic session: which psychic creation contains more authenticity, more interconnections between desires and needs, and between life and death? Analysts are pleased by dreams that poetically open up to the patient all the aspects of his psychic apparatus. It happened that all the panellists chose to speak on how to approach the anxiety generated by dreams in the session; it was therefore on this difficult and highly topical aspect that the moderator focused the discussion.

Juan-Carlos Weissman (Argentina) chose to describe his oscillation between two interpretative standpoints towards a dream that, as often occurs, leaves the dreamer feeling anxious: one approach is to ask the patient about the meaning of the dream and wait for further perspectives to open up on the unconscious; the other seeks to relieve the patient of an anxiety that is in danger of hindering the continuation of the work in the session. Weissman decides on his strategy after taking in the quality of his patient's anxiety in the context of the transference at that moment and the difficulties of his existence; the interpretative inspiration that relies on the countertransference is also a factor in this choice. The interpretation of the dream thus follows the current needs of the treatment and resembles either a quest for meaning of the kind that Freud liked to practise or a quest for treatment, a goal prioritized by Ferenczi. The interpretative decision is often taken, however, after the meaning has begun to be investigated, when the analyst feels that the patient is reaching a critical point, that is to say, his anxiety is reaching a threshold beyond which it would be unproductive or harmful to continue the investigation. Such a quest for equilibrium in the session will lead to various types of interpretation that target defence mechanisms, the transference, the ma