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In The Clinical Use of Dreams Bonime describes a therapeutic method of dream investigation derived from Horney, Robbins, Sullivan, and Fromm. An introductory chapter, The Dream in the Therapeutic Situation, deals with technique and eleven succeeding chapters with special aspects of dream analysis. Particular attention is given to symbolism, anxiety, feeling, sexuality, interpretative activity, and the place of the analyst in dreams. There are chapters on Introductory Dreams (describing the use of initial dreams in introducing the patient to the free-association procedure), on the Evidence of Evolving Health in Dreams, and on Terminal Dreams.
Bonime places his major emphasis on the 'here and now' and the current state of the relation between patient and therapist. His book contains many clinical illustrations and the dreams are amplified by the author's comments on problems of cynicism and competitiveness in our culture; these comments often color his therapy.
In the foreword, Montague Ullman stresses the originality of the author's treatment of symbolism and feeling in dreams. It is true that Bonime has developed these topics helpfully, as, for instance, in his emphasis on the need for grasping the patient's 'personal glossary' of symbols, but he has not added to what is contained in The Interpretation of Dreams. He has indeed discarded much of freudian theory and, in so doing, has sacrificed the opportunity to reveal the power of dreams to contribute to therapy by unifying present and past, theory and practice, a task so well performed by Ella Sharpe.
There is originality in Bonime's book but it is less the originality of a theorist than the personal account of a skilled and experienced