-10%
Click to enlarge
Counterdreamers: Analysts Reading Themselves £22.99 – £27.99
Back to products
Enabling and Inspiring: A Tribute to Martha Harris £28.99 – £34.99

Dream Life: A Re-examination of the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique

Author: Donald Meltzer

£18.89 – £24.99

Donald Meltzer re-establishes psychoanalysis as the art of reading dreams, and dream-life as the core of mental processes, placing the experience of the consulting room in the context of contemporary philosophical ideas about the origins and development of language.

RRP

£29.99
Author

Donald Meltzer
ISBN

9781912567126
Format

Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book
Page Extent

222
Publication Date

April 2018
Subject Areas

Bionian Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy of Language
Clear

Compare
Add to wishlist
Description

‘Dreams are my landscape’, said Meltzer. In this book, he reviews the metapsychology of dream theory through Freud, Klein and Bion and re-establishes psychoanalysis as the art of reading dreams, and dream-life as the core of mental processes. Meltzer views dream life as a continuum within each personality, of which the psychoanalyst is offered a privileged sampling, just as the child analyst is presented through play with a picture of unconscious phantasy life. Meltzer places the experience of the consulting room in the context of contemporary philosophical ideas about the origins and development of language. Dreams are not just puzzles to be decoded, the effluence of past trauma or future wish-fulfilment; they are the psyche’s attempt – with a varying level of aesthetic achievement – to symbolise its present emotional conflicts in order to re-orient itself toward ‘the real world – meaning external and internal reality’.

Contents

Contents

Foreword by Meg Harris Williams

PART A: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1. Freud’s view of the dream as the guardian of sleep
2. The epistemological problem in the theory of dreams
3. The Klein-Bion expansion of Freud’s metapsychology

PART B: A REVISED THEORY OF DREAM LIFE

4. Dreams as unconscious thinking
5. Symbols, signs, epitome, quintessence
6. Dream-life: the generative theatre of meaning
7. The interaction of visual and verbal language in dreams
8. The borderland between dreams and hallucinations

PART C: THE PRACTICE OF DREAM INVESTIGATION

9. The borderland between dreams and actions
10. Dream exploration and dream analysis
11. Dream narrative and dream continuity
12. Resistance to dream analysis in patient and analyst
13. The relation of dreaming to learning from experience in patient and analyst
14. Recovery from analysis and the self-analytic method

References
Index

About the Author

About the Author

Donald Meltzer (1923–2004) was born in New York and studied medicine at Yale. After practising as a psychiatrist specialising in children and families, he moved to England to have analysis with Melanie Klein in the 1950s, and for some years was a training analyst with the British Society. He worked with both adults and children, and was innovative in the treatment of autistic children; in the treatment of children he worked closely with Esther Bick and Martha Harris whom he later married. He taught child psychiatry and psychoanalytic history at the Tavistock Clinic. He also took a special scholarly interest in art and aesthetics, based on a lifelong love of art. Meltzer taught widely and regularly in many countries, in Europe, Scandinavia, and North and South America, and his books have been published in many languages and continue to be increasingly influential in the teaching of psychoanalysis.
His first book, The Psychoanalytical Process, was published by Heinemann in 1967 and was received with some suspicion (like all his books) by the psychoanalytic establishment. Subsequent books were published by Clunie Press for the Roland Harris Educational Trust which he set up together with Martha Harris (now the Harris Meltzer Trust). The Psychoanalytical Process was followed by Sexual States of Mind in 1973, Explorations in Autism in 1975; The Kleinian Development in 1978 (his lectures on Freud, Klein and Bion given to students at the Tavistock); Dream Life in 1984; The Apprehension of Beauty in 1988 (with Meg Harris Williams); and The Claustrum in 1992.

2 reviews for Dream Life: A Re-examination of the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique

  1. Ellie Roberts, child and adult psychotherapist and supervisor –

    ‘Meltzer reviews the metapsychology of dream theory through Freud, Klein and Bion. Employing Ella Sharpe’s creative contribution of the “poetic diction” of the dream and Chomsky’s internal grammar, and ranging through the philosophy of Susanne Langer and Ernst Cassirer, he explores the nature of language and communication. With a virtuoso use of clinical material, he suggests how the collaboration between patient and analyst can take on an aesthetic quality. The book adds hitherto unexplored layers of meaning to the analytic process, and culminates with the importance of the “fugue” of vocalisation and image in the content of the dream. To borrow Meltzer’s quote: “Be amazed”.’

  2. Raul Hartke, training analyst, Society of Porto Alegre, Brazil –

    ‘In this inspired book, essential for contemporary psychoanalysis, Meltzer considers “dream life” (dramas and unconscious waking thinking) as the internal theatre in which the symbolical representations and meaning of our emotions are generated and incremented. He creatively conceives dreams as “aesthetic objects”, whose external beauty perceived by the senses arouses anxiety but also a desire to know its essentially mysterious interior, which can only be conceived by imagination. Not the interpretation but the “exploration of dreams” enables thinking about the core of our intimate relations.’

Add a review