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Ass a result of Freud's emphasis on the latent content of a dream and the importance of the manifest content as residing chiefly or only in its being a guide to the latent content, the manifest dream has not received the attentive study it deserves. The volume under present consideration is probably the most detailed study of the manifest content as a psychic product worthy of as much scrutiny as any other that has yet been produced. There are also other areas in which the author veers away from Freud's recommendations.
The author derives a vast amount of information from the manifest content, almost startling in its wide embrace. He sees in it the nature of the instinctual drive operating in the particular dream; the resistances and defenses being employed, the nature of perceptual processes, the progress of the therapeutic relationship and the degree of regression entered into by the patient, the firmness of integrity of the ego and the self or the immanence of splitting and disintegration, and much more. He feels that the day residue is particularly informative about the nature of the patient-therapist interrelation. I feel that the author is correct by and large in what he deduces from the manifest content, but I cannot pretend that I regularly understand the process by which he reaches his conclusions.
The book is repeatedly interlarded with theoretical statements made in a dogmatic manner that seems to brook no denial, yet the reader will often have to wonder how these propositions can be substantiated, as well as puzzle over how they have been discerned. I shall give some examples of this problem, although I know that they are quoted out of context and therefore even more difficult to understand.
The construction of the mental imagery of a manifest dream necessitates a stable background for it to be retained in consciousness with the characteristics of a memory trace. Regressive mental structures, which are available for psychic functioning during sleep, do not