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The editors of this 771 page collection of articles written on various aspects of the psychoanalytic studies of dreams since World War II, have undertaken to reestablish the centrality of the dream in the field of psychoanalysis. It is in part a response to a general de-emphasis of the dream as “the royal road to the unconscious” as indicated in several writings (notably, Waldhorn, 1967).
Altman, Greenson, and others have made attempts to restore the dream to its rightful position and this collection of articles presents, I believe, a strong argument in favor of the uniqueness of the dream in psychoanalytic work. Incidentally, it also gives long overdue recognition to the important writings of Bertram Lewin, a dear friend, who made one of the few significant contributions advancing dream theory in his description of the dream screen. His analytical mind was inspirational. We had several discussions of the possible psychoanalytic implications of the neurophysiological studies on dreams and had high hopes for the research which unfortunately never fully materialized. This would understandably account for the omission of the writings of such investigators as Charles Fisher, Ramon Greenberg, and David Hawkins, among others, on REM research, although a number of references are cited. Roy Whitman describes one of his experiments in his article on “Dream about the Patient: An Approach to the Problem of Countertransference.” Charles R. Keith, in “Some Aspects of Transference in Dream Research” also reports on his work in the Dream Laboratory attempting to recover dreams and evaluating them in reference to the transference. Some of the experimental studies did make meaningful contributions to the understanding of dreams but we probably set our hopes too high (Madow & Snow, 1970).