Appendix: The Spontaneous Discussion

This chapter is similar to a panel report in that it summarizes the spontaneous discussions that were a central aspect of both editions of this workshop. The discussions of the significance of the interpretation of dreams in clinical work focused primarily on the usefulness of work with dreams in psychoanalysis and, to a lesser degree, in psychotherapy. These discussions were characterized on the one hand by statements affirming the premise that no clinical data is special or unique, and contrasting efforts to explore apparent exceptions, emendations, and/or subtle variations in this point of view. More specifically, the traditional point of view regards the reported dream as being like any other data in an analysis. It is to be regarded as manifest content and as a compromise formation. It should be analyzed in the context of the analytic process to the degree that analysis complements and facilitates the progression of the analytic process. In contrast to this point of view were efforts to explore unique meanings of dreams in regard to alternate theories of dream work functions, specific characteristics of manifest dreams in relationship to diagnosis, stages of analytic process and of life, and as specific indicators of analyzability.

Most if not all of the contributors to this book would agree with the theoretical perspective, first espoused by Freud in 1911, that from the perspective of clinical work, the dream is not unique and is to be regarded as any other data of the process. This perspective emphasizes that any attitude that regards data as special interferes with an analyst's neutrality. However, most panelists, perhaps in part because they have a particular scientific, research, and/or creative interest in dreams, seem to be particularly interested in