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That dreams can foretell the future is one of the most enduring beliefs of mankind. In a previous reprot (Kelman, 1975) I commented on one connection between the manifest dream and postdream reality that appeared to justify such beliefs. In it, I illustrated the "day precipitate" of dreams, a phenomenon whereby manifest dream content was unknowingly acted out subsequent to dreaming, often with such striking correspondence between the two that the dream almost seemed to be a "blueprint" for the later waking behavior. The following is a typical example:
An obsessional man, anxiously preoccupied with the various disasters that might befall his analyst, began one session with a dream report: "I had to leave my desk where I was enjoying looking at the pictures in the books I had. The teacher made me get up. I told him to drop dead."
Somewhat later in the hour, and totally unaware of a possible connection to his dream, he reported an uncharacteristically hostile thought that popped into his mind just as he walked into the consulting room, namely, that his analyst should "drop dead." In a similar vein, he indicated that the only useful or interesting things his analyst provided him these days were the waiting room magazines.
The day precipitate underscores the continuity of ego function, in which the ego unceasingly attempts to achieve workable compromise during both waking and sleeping states. At times some dramatic new compromise, later carried out in waking life, is first announced in a dream. In such cases the day precipitate provides vivid evidence of the synthetic activity of the ego,