Husband and Wife Exchange of Dreams

I have tried to show how a marital couple's dream-exchange and interpretation led to a rather unique level of preconscious and unconscious communication. Not only did their 'dream communion' highlight significant aspects of both their marital discord and personal pathology, but it also actuated them in developing an interpretive mechanism not unlike the Iroquois dream technique, with resulting therapeutic gains. It thus enabled them to understand and work through such mutually shared conflicts as the wife's resistance to becoming pregnant and having a child, and the husband's acting out in the form of an 'accident'. In addition, their principal motives in telling their dreams to each other were examined and certain hypotheses were advanced to explain the nature of their dream exchanges. In conclusion, it was suggested that there was a generalizability of the hypothesis that other such closely related couples—probably falling roughly within the neurotic and character neurotic population—could communicate through their dreams; given, of course, their willingness to face the consequences of their dream explorations.