ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic session can be thought of as a dream in its own right and is consequently interpretable via dream analysis. Freud (1911c) states that in an analytic session the dream should be treated no differently than the analysand's free associations. Bion seemed to think the same and actually expressed this idea to me on more than one occasion. Dreams constitute cryptic psychodramas. Furthermore, psychoanalysis can be considered to be paradoxically improvisational theatre, from the conscious points of view of the analysand and analyst and a mysteriously crafted script from the points of view of their respective unconscious. The idiom of theatre offers yet another application by analogy to psychoanalytic technique. Some of Freud's injunctions about technique could be thought of from the point of view of the rules of drama. Finally, there is yet another aspect of "psychoanalytic dramatics" that deserves mention.
