Commentary

The clinical evocation offered by Mireille Fognini introduces us pertinently to the issue and concept of the polyphony of dreams. What is reported here corresponds to the configuration of cross-dreams, which are highlighted in a remarkable way in the dream narrative by the signifier that I understand as the conjunction or articulation of I-We - the patient reports that she found herself on her knees, with her head on her analyst's knees, in front of the door of her office - but which may also suggest a scene/painting of Pietà or alternatively maternal support in front of the door of another scene. Of course, we do not have at our disposal here the analysand's associations or those of the analyst in a “fourth analysis” who shares this account with us. It is nevertheless true that the transference and countertransference elements mentioned delineate a common and shared oneiric space organised by this double dream navel that I have tried to distinguish: that which, according to Freud “reaches down into the unknown” and has its roots in the mycelium of the unconscious of each patient; and that which nourishes itself on our unconscious intersubjective relations.

As is often the case, the active traces of a traumatic experience that has affected both of them in their relationship to the dead child, and to what is associated with this in their own childhood, find in these cross-dreams a container and significant predispositions that the third function of the fourth analyst who listens to the account of the session is able to receive and transform into meaning, for each of them and for their common transference space.

The analyst noticed the sense of disarray and abandonment of her analysand and her call for help, an appeal to another when faced with a vital threat and the distress linked to it. The dream portrays this recourse against feelings of helplessness, no doubt through the figure of a tutelary grandmother who, in silence, “places her hand on her hair”. It is the func