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Although the practice of psycho-analysis in Freud's hands more or less starts with dream analysis as the “highroad to the unconscious”, it has had a disappointing history as the decades have slipped past. The literature tells the story clearly, that the painstaking unravelling of dream material through tracing of associations in the manner of the Traumdeutung, gave way gradually to an impressionistic mention of them in passing, and finally almost consistent neglect as writers passed on from investigations of psychopathology to polemics on psycho-analytical theory. It has been said by more than one distinguished person that even the teaching of dream-analysis is a matter of historical rather than technical interest.
The renewed interest in dreams which is so characteristic of the Kleinian literature stems clearly from the strong affinity between dream material and the playroom phenomena in work with children - their play, drawings, phantasies, direct transference manifestations. While some of the blame for this neglect can be laid at Freud's door for his more or less pre-psychoanalytic theory about dream mechanics and their trivial place in mental life, the main problem probably resides in the emotional experience of work with dreams. In the previous chapter I have tried to examine the nature of my own method and emotional experience with this aspect of the work, perhaps without fully acknowledging that it has come to play such a central role in my style because I find that it meets some facility, perhaps talent, in me. But while it must be true that patients vary in their talent for remembering dreams, for relating them vividly, perhaps for being able to remember them without progressive distortion, and while it must be similarly true that analysts vary in their talent for envisaging the patient's dream or a near facsimile, probably the more important factors are emotional on both sides - both for and against the full use of this particular tool of our trade.
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