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This article explores the early and contemporary relationship between dreams and psychoanalysis. Dreams, once at the center of psychoanalytic theory and practice, have lost their singular importance, having been replaced by other concerns (e.g., the therapeutic relationship). The causes of this decline are many and complex, but include, in this hypothesis, a long-standing underlying ambivalence (both love and hate) toward dreams and their interpretation in psychoanalysis. Aspects of this unacknowledged ambivalence include significant cultural, personal, and systemic factors, which are elaborated. Both appreciation, pleasure, and interest, on the one hand, and fear, suspicion, and domination, on the other, are described. The classical method and the interpersonal and relational approaches are examined in relation to dreams, and both are found to reflect difficulties in approaching dreams. Finally, the
Paul Lippmann, PhD, William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute, New York, New York.
A draft of this article was presented as an invited address to the Division 39 meeting at the 107th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Boston, August 1999. Portions of this article were first presented at the William Alanson White Institute Clinical Conference, New York, October 1990. Portions were also presented at the 12th Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Dreams, New York, June 1995.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paul Lippmann, PhD, 2 Cherry Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts 01262. Electronic mail may be sent to lippmannp@aol.com.
love-hate story is extended into the relation between dreams, psychoanalysis, and the new electronic era.