You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This paper examines dreams that become landmarks in analytic work, opening new pathways for understanding a patient's internal world. Through the analysis of a young patient whose sessions oscillated between despair, omnipotence, and intense claustrophobic anxieties, it shows how dreams provided a shared space for the development of imaginative conjectures. A central dream—structured as a film perceived from multiple points of view—revealed the patient's unstable contact-barrier and her confusion between psychotic and non-psychotic modes of experience. The paper shows how this dream provided a perspective from which to observe the mental functioning of the patient, changing the initial atmosphere of despair into a possibility of exploration and thinking, becoming a landmark in the development of the analytic process. A supervisory vignette further illustrates how approaching dreams as a way of understanding the architecture of the mind could transform a negative therapeutic atmosphere into one of curiosity and collaboration.