I would like to start with a preliminary remark. Is it possibl to say anything new about dreams?

 Of course it seems not. Dreams are probably the most common and widely investigated topic of  the whole psychoanalytic literature. Not only, but the literature on dreams is one of the most ancient in human history all over the world. So that we can say that as many topics appeared in the scientific and philosophical research and were offered to human attention only with the birth of psychoanalysis, on the contrary the psychoanalytical reflection was the last (or almost) to focus on this particular side of the behaviour of man and of his mind. Moreover, it is possible to say that the psychoanalytic thought itself was born with the research on dreams by Freud.

On the other hand, our points of view and interpretations of dreams today are very different not only from those of Freud and his major followers but also from those of the other founders of psychoanalytic schools. This is mainly due - I think - to the mutual approaching of these schools to each other and to the enrichment of psychoanalysis by the supply of philosophical, not psychoanalytical, psychology, first of all by phenomenology and existentialism. (It is quite interesting that generally these historical trends are not completely acknowledged and this, maybe, is a sign of the necessity and inevitability of the process.)

Moreover, thanks again to both psychoanalysis and philosophy, our vision of the mind and of man is now wider and more complex and this, in its turn, affects also the meaning and the role that dreams can have for us, in our life and in the therapy.

Starting from these considerations and, of course, without any ambition of completeness, now I will make some reflections on some particular aspects of dreams and will discuss a couple of dreams that can help to illustrate them.

A client of mine, a man in his 50s, a very brilliant and cultivated professional, tells me this dream:"Something was happening. I don't know what and I didn't realize it then. I just know that it was something very complex and confused, that I could never explain in words, but I am sure that I was experiencing a terrible anguish. Later I was thinking of it, I was also talking with you, and suddenly I said: 'How many errors there are in human soul! And think that I am not the worst! On the contrary, I am the best!'  I can hear the sound of my voice also in this moment".

What is interesting in this dream? Actually, we can see that it is not an ordinary one, as it is very different from the so frequent dreams that the dreamer doesn't succeed in remembering and relating exhaustively. Here we have not a normal and common case of forgetfulness and repression. In this case the dreamer cannot tell his dream just because he was not able to realize what was happening in it just during the dream itself! Of course the conscience of the dreamer’s Ego in dreams is very different from our conscience in wakefulness, but in this dream we have a dreamer who is literally dreaming not to be conscious in the situation of the dream. Thus, not only we have no repression, but maybe that no other unconscious mechanisms of defence are involved here. Simply, we are forced to admit that the dreamer was absolutely unable to know what he was dreaming during the dream.

This attains to the narrative core of the dream. As for the rest of it, it is of a very different kind. In fact, in the second part of the dream the dreamer appears to be fully conscious, he can speak clearly, to the point that the single words and the intonation of his voice can be remembered. There is even this odd replication in the dream of a meaningful reality situation as the dreamer dreams to be telling the previous part of the dream to the analyst just as he will do in reality telling him the dream in its wholeness. Moreover, we can observe that the sentence the dreamer says is only a comment to what happened before (that we will never know) and that it is frankly intellectual, full of wit and irony - characteristics that were very typical of this man in his everyday life and in his relationship to the therapist. In other words, we can say that this dream can be considered as divided into two parts and that, while the first one is totally obscure, absolutely distant from the conscience and the Ego, the second one is clear, realistic, and evidently a fruit of the intervention of the Ego in the composition of the dream. Now as this intervention, according to Freud, can basically be of one kind, consisting only in the repression of the anxiety or in other attempts to avoid it (1), this explains why at last the dreamer becomes so self-conscious and rational: actually he is almost going to awake.

However what can we say about that "terrible anguish" that was the only fact the dreamer could realize in the first part of the dream? Of course it could be a consequence of the risk of emersion of some repressed materials, perhaps related to the Shadow, as it could be assumed, on the basis of the sentence of the dreamer. But it could also be something else. Actually, the sense of a dream is always related to the actual situation of the dreamer (at least among other factors) and this is also truer in the course of a therapy. So, for example and as Jung pointed out, the first part of an analytical therapy is devoted to the clarification of the personal Shadow (2), a task that is never completely accomplished but is destined to become more and more marginal as it is progressively fulfilled. At the same time other tasks become more important, generally those which are more directly related to the individuation. Now, the dream in question belonged to an advanced phase of the analysis of this man, that typical moment when it is difficult to understand where his or her destiny is leading a person and some clear sign, maybe even a turning over, is hoped for. During these phases, archetypal, pre-oedipical materials and what is related to the pregnancy, the birth and the first weeks after it appear. So, I think that in order to understand the reasons of that anguish we have to look for in other directions, where we will probably find also the real reasons of the impossibility for the client to have any hint about the first part of his dream and to put it in words.

Anyway, before starting with this research, some other considerations are advisable. As I said above, this dream is particular but it is not unique, of course. Its particularity consists in the measure of the dreamer’s confusion and in the strong opposition between its two parts, the obscure and the clear one. Now, as all the dreamers experience, dreams can show almost infinite degrees of obscureness-clearness and among them it is possible to single out many dreams that are - we could say - in the middle between these two opposites. In these cases, the dreamer can also, more or less, remind the content of the dream but he finds it difficult (sometimes almost impossible) to translate it into words. As he tries, he is forced to rectify the narration many times, generally with the result of running up against new difficulties; he must resort to some expressions like "It was something like ___", "It was as if___" and alike. But generally no attempts are successful. At the end, the dreamer is more confused than before or is obliged to be satisfied with an account that omits many features of the story, although those features are felt to be necessary for the nuances of meaning of the whole dream. Moreover, sometimes it happens that the dreamer has some visual images or sensations that he can't tell or explain and, in short words, the dream can't be communicated in its meaningful core.

What we have to take into account is that in these cases there is no question of memory and that the source of the difficulty is in the contradictions that seem to be inextricably rooted in the story of the dream. The structure itself of this story, or of some parts and situations of it, or its scenery, its location in time, the persons involved etc. are contradictory, so that they allow only some hints and indefinite, fleeting sensations.

Now, among these difficulties there is one which is at the bottom of them all: and it is the difficulty of translating into words something that doesn't belong to the realm of words, like images. Visual and verbal languages are very different, they have laws of their own that can overlap only partially, until the point that sometimes it is impossible for them to be unified. So, there are visual patterns that can't - and must not - be translated into words, otherwise they are completely betrayed (just as there are some mental products that can be exposed in words but couldn't be translated into images). Let's keep in mind only this point, for instance: a complex image contains many features that are put together contemporarily, while verbal language develops itself in time. Moreover there are not only visual images, but also some psychic contents (it is hard to define them "images" or "patterns", but actually they are) that don't come from the vision but from other perceptions or from uniquely mental behaviours. At last, we have to remember that dreams constitute a completely different world, that is ruled by a logic that is necessarily different from that which underlies our everyday, vigil's behaviour or from formal logic (3).

I want to add to this point that, while until now I have spoken about images, we can easily assume that just as there are some psychic situations (like these I am quoting) that are pre-verbal (that is to say that they can't be expressed by words), so surely there are some which are also pre-imaginal (that is to say that they can't express themselves in images either). They must be bodily situations without any real psychic content and, yet, with a psychic meaning, in the sense that they have the ability to cause unconscious reactions and give an imprinting for future behaviours. (The field where these phenomena must take place is probably what Jung called "psychoid".) But, on the other hand, generally what can't be put into words is related to some sum of anxiety, and sometimes it is a source of a real anguish.