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I hope to convey to the reader through the analysis of a dream specimen how I as an interpersonal psychoanalyst apprehend and process a dream in the context of an actual session; how the dream evokes in me thoughts, images, associations, and affective responses; and how these are shared in dialogue with the patient. I find the patient's dream important because it vividly expresses in imagery, affect, and narrative her modes of coping with interpersonal anxiety by selective inattention and dissociation.
It is my view that this dream was triggered in response to a therapeutic impasse. My response to the impasse led to increased activity and a concordant effort on my part to engage the patient in the here and now, which led to a transference-countertransference enactment represented in the dream. The analysis of the dream allowed the recognition of what I had until then not been able to perceive.
Sharing with the patient my associations to her dream permitted an in-depth dialogue to take place. I have attempted to reconstruct my personal reactions to the dream as they unfolded, the clinical decisions I made, and why I made them.
This paper is dedicated to Erich Fromm, Ph.D., who encouraged me to go my own way in working with dreams. It was given as the Presidential Address, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, in Toronto, Canada, on August 22, 1993.
Leopold Caligor, Ph.D. is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute and Clinical Professor and Supervisor, Adelphi University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is also Past President of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39) of the American Psychological Association, coeditor (with Philip Bromberg and James Meltzer) of Clinical Perspectives on the Supervision of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and coauthor (with Rollo May) of Dreams and Symbols.
© 1996 The Analytic Press