ABSTRACT
The symbolization of emotional states by means of images of concrete things, omnipresent in dreams, is silent, implied metaphor. Ella Sharpe maintains ‘The laws of poetic diction, evolved by the critics from great poetry and the laws of dream formation as discovered by Anna Freud, spring from the same unconscious sources and have the same mechanisms in common’. Stressing that the latent content of a dream is derived from experience of some kind, Sharpe points out that this is both of memories of actual past occurrences and also of the emotional states and bodily sensations accompanying such occurrences. The activity of the dream work converts latent content into manifest dream and the main thrust of classical interpretation was towards understanding the latent content. Winnicott goes on to suggest that, in the sterile fantasying process, patient is manically, omnipotently controlling his internal objects, doing what he calls ‘object relating’. When dreaming comes with imagination, this omnipotence is loosened and objects attain a freedom.
