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What follows is an account of a five-week psychotherapeutic experience that takes its central theme from a dream occurring at the end of a young man's first year in psychoanalysis. Out of a number of possibilities in a vivid dream, a particular problem was formulated and focused upon. The problem, a mother making her son feel inadequate, might appear, in context, to have been an arbitrary choice and to disregard other significant elements of the dream. Choices often have to be made; this does not necessarily entail a sacrifice of data. Unpursued and unresolved problems recur in new dreams (Bonime, 1966, 1969), and, furthermore, neglected material is often retrieved as an association of either the patient or the therapist.
These preliminary considerations are based upon the premise that dreams can be of great value in psychoanalysis. Dreams by themselves, detached from the context of the life in which they are engendered, may be no more than imagistic presentations ranging in interest from entrancing to meaningless or dull. Explored in the context of the dreamer's life, they may be infinitely challenging and expanding both to the imagination and to the comprehension of the human state. From the clinical standpoint they can be of great value to the dreamer and clinician and to both increasedly so if approached collaboratively (Bonime, 1986). The value is expressed first in terms of insight. For the individual with a problem, the worth of any insight, no matter how profound, is itself entirely conditional. Insight is rewarding in terms of two correlated elements. Its first value lies in a greater clarity, a more realistic concept of the painful circumstances of one's life. The second and related aspect of insight is recognition of one's personal contribution in producing a recurrent painful experience. Recognizing one's