ABSTRACT
As we study W. F. D. Fairbairn's writings, it becomes abundantly clear that his patients' dreams occupied a special place in his clinical and theoretical work. Understanding and interpreting his patients' dreams assisted him in the working through of their particular psychopathology and contributed to his building his distinctive personality theory. Fairbairn clearly challenged one of S. Freud's basic dream hypotheses, but let us not forget how much they shared in common regarding the essential functions of dreams in the psychoanalytic process. Daily events impinge on the dreamer and evoke both conscious and underlying preconscious themes that may be ascertained with few free associations. Within Fairbairn's perspective this may lead to an understanding of interpersonal object relations which can be integrated with a formulation of the dynamics of the underlying endopsychic structures. Fairbairn helped us to listen to many voices that were emerging from his patients' dreams, but he shut us off from knowing how he himself listened to them.
