IX. The Borderland between Dreams and Actions

If we are to be faithful to the model of the mind defined by the extended metapsychology of Klein and Bion, we must assume that the dream process is the foundation not only of our view-of-the-world, and therefore of mood, but also that every dream is an attempt to solve a conflict which, while primarily an internal world matter, has implications for behaviour in the outside world. It is clear that individuals differ widely in their capacity to utilize thought as a mediator between impulse and action; some indeed seem to overreach its utility and replace action by thought, so that impulse finds no expression in the outside world. From that point of view the aim of action to modify the external world so that it more aptly meets the individual's requirements, or at least his desires, is lost in internal world modification.

In understanding the place of dreams in our lives, or rather the relation between our dream life and our total life-process, we need to address ourselves to both aspects of this problem - denial of psychic reality with its reliance on experimental action, and retreat from external reality with its many forms of withdrawal. Somewhere in between the two ends of the spectrum of the mediation by thought between impulse and action, lies the realm of art-science where thought is content to act in the service of knowledge of the outside world without necessarily intending its modification. There is good reason to think that love-making in its most developed form belongs to this art-science area. I have chosen this middle ground between acting-out and withdrawal, between excessive and inadequate transformation of dream-life into action, as the most fruitful area for investigation of the problem. But what, in fact, is the problem?

In this chapter I address myself mainly to the technical problems in the practice of analysis. In what way does the analysis of dreams enable us to help the patient to pursue the evolution of the transference experience without