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In his conclusion to the by now classic article, “The Exceptional Position of the Dream in Psychoanalytic Practice,” Ralph Greenson (1970) wrote,
The dream is an exceptional and unique production of the patient. It is his special creation, but can only be fully understood if the analyst and the patient work together by means of the patient's free associations and the analyst's interpretations, (p. 545)
Dream Portrait, succinct and easily read, quintessentially illustrates Green-son's position on the dream as an “exceptional” communication. This small volume should be of use to scholars, students, and clinicians and can be understood by the sophisticated lay person. It contains not the usual abstract, jargon-filled discussion of psychoanalysis but psychoanalysis as it happens in the “nitty gritty.” What is “exceptional” here is the authors' demonstration of the dream as “prognosticator,” of the dream as having predictive value about what is going to happen in the analysis.
Dream Portrait is the work of three main authors, Alma Bond, Daisy Franco, and Arlene Kramer Richards, as well as four junior audiors, Ros-lyn Goldner, Anita Katz, Florence Williams, and Phyllis Beren. These seven psychoanalysts formed a study group led by Richards at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and were able, after what I would have expected to be a good deal of difference of opinion, to come to enough agreement to put on paper a work that is fluid, unified, and well integrated. This is not the first work of an institute study group (the Kris Study Group being another example), but the accomplishment is a noteworthy one. Richards, the group's coordinator, is to be commended for what must have been a considerable challenge.
The audiors' main contribution lies in their conceptualization of one aspect of the termination phase in psychoanalysis, what they call the “pre-termination phase,” wherein a “signal” that termination is imminent occurs. On the book jacket, it is n