Book
This Art of Psychoanalysis: Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries
A collection of essays published in 2005 in Routledge's New Library of Psychoanalysis. Thomas Ogden asks why dreaming should be the mind's most important psychoanalytic activity, and proposes a new way of conceiving the part dreaming plays in human psychology. Building on Freud, Klein, Winnicott and Bion, he explores the idea that psychopathology manifests a breakdown in a person's capacity to dream their own experience, and examines how the analyst takes part psychologically in the patient's dreaming. Clinical accounts run through the book, which sets out to convey a humane way of being with patients, not only a set of techniques. Its chapters include the title essay on dreaming undreamt dreams and interrupted cries, a new reading of the origins of object-relations theory, "On Not Being Able to Dream", "What's True and Whose Idea Was It?", a reading of Bion, "On Holding and Containing, Being and Dreaming" and an essay on psychoanalytic writing.
Main ideas
- Dreaming is the mind's most important psychoanalytic activity.
- Psychopathology is a manifestation of a breakdown in a person's capacity to dream their experience.
- The analyst takes part psychologically in the patient's dreaming, dreaming the dreams the patient could not dream.
- The book offers a new reading of the origins of object-relations theory and distinguishes holding from containing.
- Analysis is conveyed as a humane and compassionate way of being with patients, not merely a set of techniques.
What it shows
- 2003
Thomas H. Ogden introduced Dreaming oneself into existence
The 2003 paper introduces undreamt and interrupted dreams; the 2005 book frames the analyst's task as dreaming the patient's undreamt dreams so that the patient can dream themselves more fully into existence.
- 2005
Dreaming oneself into existence derives from Reverie
The analyst's reverie is the main way in which they take part in dreaming the patient's undreamt dreams.