ABSTRACT
On beginning this writing, I wanted to do several things: to trace back the manifest forms an erotic daydream took from the present to its childhood beginnings; to find the impulses motivating the daydream in its varied forms from childhood on; to find the psychologic origins of these impulses; to dissect these elements out of the far larger mass of data that makes up a psychoanalysis; to give enough visibility to what went on in the analysis that outsiders might sense the process, judge the accuracy of the reports of what happened, and so feel comfortable in coming to conclusions and in playing them off against those I reached; to present the data accurately, despite the absolute need to edit the living experiences into a written language and to protect the patient’s anonymity; to write clearly in my own language; to extend my search for a methodology in psychoanalysis to help us move toward the accepted rules for a scientific enterprise; to increase our understanding of the dynamics of sexual excitement; to go after larger issues of psychology, such as the nature of meaning, wish, motivation, will, awareness, intention; to participate with colleagues in the effort to keep psychoanalysis lively, useful, creative, pertinent, honest, and a continuing source of new data and ideas.
