The dream as a vehicle for the recovery of childhood trauma

Gertrude and Rubin Blanck (1979), drawing on Freud's discovery that a dream may lead to the recovery of forgotten childhood experiences, have shown how certain dreams may provide access to the pattern of the early mother-child relationship and to critical events that occur before the ego is capable of processing experience adequately. Drawing from their considerations, this paper demonstrates how a dream was employed to reconstruct a pattern of early chronic stress trauma which had contributed to a repetitive pattern of self destructive behavior in a depressed woman. This reconstructive effort helped start the difficult work of diminishing the painful impact of the traumatic past and paved the way for a beginning identification with a protective object, the therapist.