ABSTRACT
This chapter suggest that for dream formation to occur, the preconscious wish must activate an unconscious connection with an infantile complex. Thus movement of unconscious contents into the Preconscious may occur not only by transferences across or through the repression barrier, but also more directly as a result of therapeutically induced reduction in defensive activities. Freud's concept that unsatisfied wishes and unsolved problems of the day give rise to dreams gained indirect support from later experiments by Zeigarnik, who found that unfinished tasks are remembered longer and more clearly. The hysteric acts out memories of fantasies dealing with object relationships; the schizophrenic acts out inner objectless narcissistic experiences. Psychoanalytic theory helps to distinguish between these two types of "breaks" with reality. The neurotic break is a regression from a frustrating current object relationship to a libidinal object of childhood. The psychotic regresses farther, breaks with the infantile objects, and reverts to narcissistic substitutes for the lost infantile objects.
