ABSTRACT
These themes are refigured in Alva’s dream diary. Here she abandoned her customary style of careful empirical writing and let the account of her dreams float between past and present, recording stories of imagined events peopled with real and fantasized characters. Her parents, Gunnar, and her children were central to her dreams, as she played out the inner conflicts she experienced as she struggled to please everyone and cope with their competing demands while carrying on a busy schedule of professional and political activities. Gunnar appeared as a willful animal and adulterous husband, her children as disruptive but intermittent presences. In analyzing her dreams, Alva searched for latent meanings and backed away from those elements that troubled her waking life, especially the family crisis precipitated by the departure of her troubled son.
