Dreams and Acting out

From the daily analysis of patients' dreams it is found that the unconscious not only expresses itself in these dreams, but that from a dream we understand much of the dreamer's behavior in the waking state. In analysis, patients' dreams seem to acquire a new significance as a means of communication with the analyst. The connections with a patient's daily activities are, therefore, particularly important and enlightening. In associations to details of the manifest dream we find such connections between actions, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, and the latent dream content. Usually the patient relates a dream, after which he gives associations, and with the analyst's help, comes to an understanding of the significance of the dream, and its psychological connections with reality, the transference, and the analysis.

At different times I have had the opportunity to observe a sequence of events which appears to be the reverse of the usual procedure. I refer to certain incidents of acting out which precede the narration of dreams in the analytic hour so immediately, and which can be understood so clearly after the dream has been told, that one forms the impression that the acting out functions as a preceding dream association.

A patient who lived near my office came to the hour without the spectacles he always wears. He stated he forgot to take them when he left home and that he did not bother to go back for them since he was a little late and could walk the short distance without spectacles. He had never before forgotten his spectacles during two years of analysis. It then occurred to him that he had had a dream the preceding night. He dreamed that he started an argument with another man, and before getting into a fist fight he was taking off his spectacles in order to prevent his eyes from being injured by glass particles if the man should strike back. Acting out in the form of forgetting the glasses and the dream explain each other