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This volume of twenty-eight essays by different authors, dealing with the clinical theory of dreams and the dream in various psychopathological states, in special therapeutic situations, and in various psychotherapeutic modalities, reaffirms the dream as the royal road to the unconscious.
The format of most of the chapters consists of a theoretical discussion of a specific subject combined with one or more relevant clinical vignettes with dreams. The volume as a whole contains a great number of illustrative dreams in their clinical settings. From these, it is apparent that many of the contributors rely on the manifest content of the dream alone for an understanding of the ongoing dynamics of the therapeutic situation and for guidance in their therapeutic interventions. In group psychotherapy the members readily interpret each others' as well as their own dreams. Roy M. Whitman in his chapter, "The Dream in Sexual Dysfunction Therapy," states that he requires the couples he treats to bring at least one dream each to every session. He believes that useful inferences are made from the manifest content of the dreams by the therapist, by the dreamer, and even by the dreamer's spouse. Frank M. Kline, in his chapter, "The Dream in the Treatment of the Disadvantaged," asserts that dreams are especially useful in clinics with multinational and multicultural populations since they transcend cultural barriers as a universal language. In training situations they are helpful to the supervisor because they are a direct communication from the patient.
Changes in the quality and manifest content of the dream help the therapist grasp the vicissitudes of a case in treatment. In the "bridging" therapeutic approach to schizophrenia, John S. Kafka observes that the more vivid and realistic the dream appears, the closer is the individual to a psychotic regression, while the more dreamlike the dreams are, the more removed is the patient from a psychotic organization. In suicidal pa