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According to Freud we consider a dream 'typical' if it occurs in many persons with little variation, and 'stereotyped' if it recurs many times in the same person.
To the writer's knowledge no attention has been paid to a typical and stereotyped dream which appears only during analysis and is related to it. The emotional accompaniment of the dream is a feeling of resentment expressed in the complaint that the analytic session is disturbed by others in the office or in adjoining rooms whose presence robs the patient of the privacy to which he is entitled. In some cases associations are obtained, but in most instances this is so only when the analysis is far advanced and a great deal of resistance has been removed. Its interpretation, as that of all typical and stereotyped dreams, opens the way to the deepest and most strongly repressed wishes of the patient. A remarkably swift flow of associations often ensues after interpretation has been given, and the relief felt by the patient because a resistance has been overcome is immediately noticeable. The writer has observed this kind of dream in many patients and assumes that other analysts have had the same experience.
The variations of this typical and stereotyped dream are as follows:
First variation: While the patient is lying on the couch in the office, the analytic session is disturbed by the presence, or movement in and out, of the analyst's wife or some other member of his family. It is the dreamer's feeling that he cannot talk freely, that he cannot tell everything as it comes to his mind.
A male patient who had such a dream in the advanced stage of his analysis, immediately associated with it the fact that one