ABSTRACT
For Donald Meltzer, dreaming is at the centre of the psychoanalytic experience. He links the exploration of dreams with the efficacy of the psychoanalytic process. Exploring dream-life helps to glimpse the way dreaming contributes to what Meltzer calls "the question of growth". The chapter offers some personal reflections, inspired by Meltzer, on the fruitful harvest of dreams and dreaming. Dreaming, according to Meltzer, is a process that creates the possibility of transforming emotional experiences into meaning. One of the most important problems, which every analysis will face, involves the patient's capacity to recognize and develop the organ of consciousness—the capacity to tolerate and explore psychic quality. The psychoanalytic setting is a workspace for exploring dream-life, and, if it is successfully elaborated, a kind of apprenticeship in exploring psychic reality can unfold. Survival is an existential life problem of the organism or individual. The dreams in the domain convey profound psychic distress.
