The use of the dream in the promotion of ego development

Two functions of dreams, described but not stressed by Freud—the dream as a way of remembering early childhood experiences and the dream as an attempt to master painful stimuli—are considered in this paper in terms of their significance in the treatment of patients whose preoedipal developmental difficulties have resulted in distortions or deficiencies in psychic structure. By providing access to that period of life before semantic communication a time of profound developmental import, certain dreams can illuminate critical experiences of that period. They may lead to the discovery of positive experiences which can be utilized as a starting point for the fostering of more positive object representations or they may lead to the understanding of early traumatic experiences which can be dealt with retrospectively in the therapeutic situation.