On Not Being Able to Dream

In this paper Ogden addresses the inability to dream, which he distinguishes from simply failing to remember one's dreams. Following Bion, he holds that it is the work of dreaming that creates the differentiation of conscious and unconscious mind, not the reverse; a person who cannot dream therefore cannot generate distinct conscious and unconscious experience, and cannot tell sleeping from waking or dreaming from perceiving. He approaches the problem from three directions: theoretically, through Bion's ideas; through a story by Borges that renders, with unusual artistry, what it is like to be unable to dream; and clinically, through a long analysis in which the patient at first produced a profusion of 'psychic noise' the analyst could not use. Over years this left the analyst deprived of reverie and subject to brief episodes of countertransference psychosis. Ogden discusses two sessions in which the analytic work strengthened the capacity of both patient and analyst for genuine dreaming, in sleep and in reverie.