This article was downloaded by: [Adelphi University]On: 15 August 2014, At: 01:08Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T3JH, UK

Psychoanalytic Dialogues:The International Journal ofRelational PerspectivesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpsd20

The interpretation of dreams:A centennial celebrationLewis Aron Ph.D., ABPP a & James L. FosshagePh.D. b c d ea Director of the New York University PostdoctoralProgram in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis , 13Longview Road, Port Washington, NY, 11050 E-mail:b Cofounder, Board Director, and Faculty of theNational Institute for the Psychotherapies , NewYork Cityc Founding Faculty Member of the Institute for thePsychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity , New York Cityd Clinical Professor of Psychology , New YorkUniversity Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapyand Psychoanalysise 16 Poplar Road, Demarect, NJ, 07627 E-mail:Published online: 02 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Lewis Aron Ph.D., ABPP & James L. Fosshage Ph.D. (1999)The interpretation of dreams: A centennial celebration, Psychoanalytic Dialogues:The International Journal of Relational Perspectives, 9:6, 721-724, DOI:10.1080/10481889909539357

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10481889909539357

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verifiedwith primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liablefor any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses,damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arisingdirectly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of theuse of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ade

lphi

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

1:08

15

Aug

ust 2

014

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 9(6):721-724, 1999

The Interpretation of Dreams:A Centennial Celebration

Lewis Aron, Ph.D., ABPPJames L. Fosshage, Ph.D.

Psycho-Analysis may be said to have been born with the twentiethcentury; for the publication in which it emerged before the worldas something new—my Interpretation of Dreams—bears the date"1900" [Freud, 1924, p. 191].

FREUD'S MAGNUM OPUS, THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (1900), THE

centerpiece of all his work, was actually published at the begin-ning of November 1899, as we are informed by the translator of

the Standard Edition (p. 191, footnote). Therefore, it is fitting and inaccordance with historical accuracy that, with this November 1999issue, Psychoanalytic Dialogues initiates a series of symposia markingthe 100th anniversary of the publication of Freud's masterpiece andthe 100th birthday of psychoanalysis.

Freud's evaluations of his own publications tended to fluctuate wildly(Grubrich-Simitis, 1996), and he was often self-deprecating in thisregard. Indeed, Freud (1900) explicitly acknowledged periods ofinsecurity about the value of his contributions: "During the long yearsin which I have been working at the problems of the neuroses, I haveoften been in doubt and sometimes been shaken in my convictions.At such times it has always been the Interpretations of Dreams that hasgiven me back my certainty" (p. xxvi). Freud's confidence in The

Lewis Aron, Ph.D., ABPP is the Director of the New York University PostdoctoralProgram in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and an Associate Editor of Psychoana-lytic Dialogues.

James L. Fosshage, Ph.D., Cofounder, Board Director, and Faculty of the NationalInstitute for the Psychotherapies, New York City, is a Founding Faculty Member ofthe Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York City, and Clini-cal Professor of Psychology, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psycho-therapy and Psychoanalysis.

721 © 1999 The Analytic Press, Inc.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ade

lphi

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

1:08

15

Aug

ust 2

014

722 Lewis Aron and James L. Fosshage

Interpretation of Dreams and the revolutionary contributions containedwithin it remained secure throughout his life. As late as 1931, in thepreface to the third English edition of the classic, he wrote: "It contains,even according to my present-day judgement, the most valuable of allthe discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such asthis falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime" (Freud, 1900, p. xxxii).

In the early history of psychoanalysis, the dream quite clearly hadan "exceptional" position in relation to other psychic phenomena(Greenson, 1970). Freud's own self-analysis centered on his owndreams, and the early analysts in Freud's circle engaged in variousforms of informal mutual dream analysis, as did Freud, Jung, andFerenczi on their 1909 voyage to America. Freud's famous case historiessometimes revolved around just a few pivotal dreams, as in the Doracase and in the Wolfman case. Freud taught that

The interpretation of dreams is in fact the royal road to aknowledge of the unconscious; it is the securest foundation ofpsycho-analysis and the field in which every worker must acquirehis convictions and seek his training. If I am asked how one canbecome a psycho-analyst, I reply: 'By studying one's own dreams.'Every opponent of psycho-analysis hitherto has, with a nicediscrimination, either evaded any consideration of TheInterpretation of Dreams, or has sought to skirt over it with themost superficial objections. If, on the contrary, you can acceptthe solutions of the problems of dream-life, the novelties withwhich psycho-analysis confronts your minds will offer you nofurther difficulties [1910, p. 33].

In his review of the place of the dream in the history and practiceof psychoanalysis, Kaplan (1989) wrote that "common analytic wisdomonce regarded a session in which the patient brought no dream as anoccasion of exceptionally high resistance, and a session in which thedream yielded to a less-than-satisfactory interpretation as a failure"(p. 59). As Kaplan's paper persuasively demonstrates, when a patienttells an analyst a dream, an exceptional situation is mobilized in thetransference-countertransference precisely because analysts havesupposedly acquired a professional competence in the interpretationof dreams, and so the telling of a dream to an analyst is bound tochallenge the extent to which we may live up to (or be seen by ourpatients as living up to) our professional ideals.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ade

lphi

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

1:08

15

Aug

ust 2

014

A Centennial Celebration 723

Yet, as we prepare for a second century of psychoanalysis, we seethat Freud's work is under sustained attack (Crews, 1998). In this dayand age of "revisionist Freud studies," Freud's dream theories havebeen negatively evaluated even by sympathetic critics (Fisher andGreenberg, 1996). What is the place of the dream within contemporarypsychoanalysis? How are dreams understood and clinically used by arange of contemporary psychoanalysts? What have we learned frommodern empirical dream research and from recent neurophysiologicalinvestigations?

In this issue, we have gathered new work by several leading expertson dream theory and research. We begin with Rosemarie Sand'shistorical overview, "The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud and theWestern Dream Tradition," which raises questions about Freud'spresentation of dream theories and dream interpretation practicesbefore his own contributions and which reconsiders the usefulness ofthe dreams' manifest content and symbolic interpretation. RamonGreenberg and Chester A. Pearlman then present "The Interpretationof Dreams: A Classic Revisited," in which they provide an overviewof dream studies from the modern sleep laboratory and describe aninformation-processing and problem-solving theory of dreamfunctioning. These two articles are then each discussed by MiltonKramer and Ernest Hartmann in two independent commentaries. Thissymposium will be followed in the year 2000 by a detailed study ofclinical dream material by analysts of different points of view.

REFERENCES

Crews, F. C., ed. (1998), Unauthorized Freud. New York: Viking.Fisher, S. & Greenberg, R. E (1996), Freud Scientifically Reappraised. New York: Wiley.Freud, S. (1900), The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4 & 5. London:

Hogarth Press, 1953._____ (1910), Five lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 11: 1-56. London:

Hogarth Press, 1957._____ (1924), A short account of psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 19: 191-209.

London: Hogarth Press, 1961.Greenson, R. R. (1970), The exceptional position of the dream in psychoanalytic

practice. Psychoanal. Quart., 39: 519-549.Grubrich-Simitis, I. (1996), Back to Freud's Texts, trans. E Slotkin. New Haven, CT:

Yale University Press.Kaplan, D. M. (1989), The place of the dream. In: Clinical and Social Realities, ed.

L. J. Kaplan. Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1995, pp. 57-76.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ade

lphi

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

1:08

15

Aug

ust 2

014

724 Lewis Aron and James L. Fosshage

Lewis Aron, Ph.D., ABPP13 Longview RoadPort Washington, NY 11050E-mail: lewaron@psychoanalysis.net

James L. Fosshage, Ph.D.16 Poplar RoadDemarect, NJ 07627E-mail: fosshage@psychoanalysis.net

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ade

lphi

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

1:08

15

Aug

ust 2

014