Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

November 16, 1976. THE MORNING RUMINATIVE STATE—THE FLASH PHENOMENON. John Frosch, M.D.

Dr. Frosch expanded his examination of the relationship of dreaming, sleeping, and awakening to psychopathology by focusing attention on the morning ruminative state (MRS). This is a period of obsessive-like rumination occurring either during the night in a moment of partial awakening or upon awakening in the morning. Ushered in at times by a sudden "flash" experienced a few moments after waking, the MRS often reflects themes of a dream which has occurred shortly before. Such themes may be related to transference events or to other elements of infantile conflict connected with experiences in the patient's life, both current and past. Dr. Frosch presented two clinical vignettes illustrating the phenomenon in the analytic process. The MRS may be viewed as the persistence of conflict, activated in a dream, into the partially awake state, i.e., a sort of "night residue." In certain individuals with fragile ego organization, these ruminations may become part of a psychotic disorganization, reflecting their excessive instinctual investment in the presence of an ego in which censorship and the capacity to test reality are markedly impaired. In patients with a more intact ego, the morning ruminative state will be corrected by the awakened ego's reality function, and the conflict will then be dealt with in a manner more appropriate to the awake state.

The frequently encountered flash phenomenon may reflect several types of dramatic shifts in the psychic economy, in which the sexual and/or aggressive components in a dream or other impulses are opposed to aspects of ego and/or superego functioning. The consequent thoughts are analogous to the "flash" of sudden revelation in a psychotic experience, such as those connected with a grandiose delusion, e.g., "I am God" or "I am the universe."

In the morning ruminative state, the awakening ego can be said to "process" the nighttime dream,