Meetings of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

DISCUSSION: Dr. Jerome Levine placed Dr. Silber's paper within the historical context of the long-standing debate about the special significance of the dream as a clinical psychic product. In Dr. Levine's opinion, Dr. Silber was making too great an attempt to differentiate Freud's use of the word "representation" from "affirmation," and, in view of the paucity of published clinical examples, he judged it too arbitrary to insist on the undisguised reality of the manifest dream within the dream. He reminded the audience that Freud had leaned heavily on Stekel's publications on this issue and did not himself present analyzed examples of this phenomenon. Dr. Levine would stress the communicative aspect of this dream. In support of this view, he discussed the hour in which the dream appeared as an illustration of the "good analytic hour" described by Kris. In keeping with Kris's observations, Dr. Levine considered that the relevant memory recall and integrative work had been accomplished during the night of the dream, and that Dr. Silber's facilitating reconstruction helped his patient overcome transference resistance to dealing with the material within the analytic hour. Dr. Lawrence Chalfin felt that this dream within a dream illustrated several things. It confirmed a real experience, but also illustrated the stage of this patent's transference neurosis at a special time in her analysis: a time when the working alliance was solid and her waning religious devotion was being replaced by her increasing urge and ability to explore her intrapsychic life using her transference feelings as her guide. Dr. Chalfin noted that the dream within a dream is evidence of the ego's need for synthesis motivated by its fear of superego reprisals, but that the transparent nature of the negation ("It's not real—it's only a dream"), the obvious invitation to the analyst posed by this curious structure, as well as the way she worked with the dream and the analyst, all suggest that