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The occurrence of transitory or prolonged illness following in the wake of certain dreams is a phenomenon for which no satisfactory explanation has been offered although it is a common experience in psychoanalytic therapy. These acute reactions which occur in connection with dreams are either psychological
or somatic and vary from mild and fleeting phenomena to prolonged and incapacitating illnesses. The author discusses instances of migraine, skin lesions, an acute anxiety state and an agitated depression requiring hospitalization. Inasmuch as dreams are the expressions of conflicts which are already activated and the acute reactions which follow them have the same psychological structure, we need to look beyond the dream and the acute reaction sequence for the etiology of both. Experiences from his practice have led the author to conclude that those dreams which are followed by acute reactions during psychoanalytic therapy presage momentous events in the transference relationship. This is another way of saying that they represent attempts to cope with the very core of the patient's neurosis. The dreams described provide a true clue to the acute reactions which accompany them. In so far as the remnants of the dream day are always present it seems highly probable that they constitute the precipitating cause of the acute reactions. Consequently, the 'day-remnants' in these dreams are of greater importance than ordinarily and they must be established and understood in these dreams more thoroughly than is our usual custom in practice.
AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT