Tarbox reviews the Isakower phenomenon and Lewin's concept of the dream screen; in this review he uses Spitz's 1955 paper, The Primal Cavity, as principal source and authority. He understands the Isakower phenomenon as a regression reaching memory traces occurring between the third and sixth months of life. The approaching large object or mass is understood to represent the breast with its promise of food or the mother's face, or a composite of the two. These phenomena can be experienced as good (tension reducing and blissfully satisfying) or bad (painful and terrifying). The dream screen is understood to pertain to a slightly later period in life and to represent the wish to relax and be devoured into a happy sleep. The dream screen may function to deny in manic fashion the psychic pain of an Isakower experience. Having established this theoretical background, Tarbox convincingly demonstrates these phenomena in Poe's MS. Found in a Bottle and The narrative of A. Gordon Pym, and in Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro.