ABSTRACT
Historical Introduction Dreaming, by and large, in and out of the psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature, has been approached as a different and very special thought proc ess. In psychoanalysis, it has been regarded as a uniquely valuable therapeu tic and diagnostic instrument. Freud's earliest psychoanalytic conceptions received great impetus from his investigation of dreams, although they were based, for the most part, on a neurological model of sexual excitation and frustration (Freud, 1899; Amacher, 1965). Much of what Freud formu lated is still valid; there is much, however, that no longer holds true in the light of clinical and laboratory research of the last four decades. Neverthe less, the value of the dream as an instrument for probing into the intricacy of the human personality stands unquestioned today.
