Ego Synthesis in Dreams: By Richard M. Jones. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Co., Inc., 1962. 100 pp.

The author is interested in the general psychology of dreams rather than in their clinical application. He sees the approach to dreams as having been primarily dynamic, confined to interplay between wish fulfilment and ego defenses. Although various workers following Freud have, implicitly or explicitly, indicated that the dream also has the task of solving personal problems, the author's objective is a detailed specification of how the dream may perform this function. He therefore concentrates on synthetic ego function—'the synthesis ego'—which mediates epigenetic and adaptive functionings. He confines his approach solely to the manifest dream and in particular employs a method of 'epigenetic analysis' for the study of adaptive growth.

Jones relies on Erikson's epigenetic principles for his frame of reference. Using Erikson's 'worksheet' of psychosexual zones, modes, and psychosocial development (with some highly speculative modifications and extensions), he shifts attention from the usual content variables to formal variables in the manifest dream. This necessitates a search for a regular pattern in the material that may correspond to these (forms and) structures (stable or quasi-stable psychic and behavioral patterns). In testing his hypotheses, Jones does find characteristic patterns in his material, which he believes may be typical of the dreamer's 'synthesis ego'.

There is no reason why the manifest dream, like any other piece of psychic material, should not come under scrutiny. Thus Jones's interest is in line with that of workers on the problem of cognitive structures. However, some questions do arise. One can sympathize with Jones's wish to keep variables at a minimum, which leads him to use dreams and associations written by students in nonclinical settings; this permits him to approach the material 'objectively' as one might a Rorschach protocol. But, whereas the Rorschach has