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Shrink Dreams is ambiguously titled: its subtitle is actually closer to the mark. What the book sets out to do is to describe, illustrate, and explore the subtle and complex triadic relationship between patient, therapist, and supervisor, much as if all three were present
in the same room at the same time, as indeed they are. Each of the ten chapters in the book presents a different such relationship, embodying a strikingly different set of problems. In the first nine chapters, the author is the supervisor; in the tenth, Myers is a young therapist presenting to his supervisor.
First and foremost, Wayne Myers is a born story-teller. His narrative style is lean, taut, and vividly evocative of person and setting, and his language is clean, crisp, colloquial English. He does not use a single word of professional jargon unless there is literally no other way to express his meaning, a talent as rare as pearls among psychoanalytic writers. The book is therefore accessible to the general, as well as to the more sophisticated, reader. A weekend guest of mine, physician but not psychiatrist, finished it in one gulp as purely recreational reading and found it both spell-binding and thought-provoking. Provoking thought was surely one of the author's major aims, as must have been the desire to challenge a wider audience than only the psychoanalytically-trained.
Each of the chapter headings begins with the words, “The Dream of,” and goes on to explore: 1) Sexual Possession, 2) Revenge, 3) Being White, 4) Envy, 5) Rescuing a Damsel in Distress, 6) Letting Go, 7) Overcoming Anxiety, 8) Overcoming Emptiness in One's Life, 9) Having the Perfect Child, and 10) Finding a good Father. The device of beginning each chapter with “The Dream of” is in some ways a felicitous condensation, but it is also a source of confusion since the author uses “dream” interchangeably to represent at least five different meanings that are discernible only by their contexts: primitive and/or forbidden wishes