ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the term reverie to indicate both images and the products of dreaming. In fact, the word reverie is ambiguous, and refers to a function as well as to its results. The term reverie may be applied to almost any content. Reverie is thus relational process made up of various moments or phases among which a maternal function and a capacity for emotional receptivity play a fundamental role. Thus, reception, gestation, and restitution are what occur during reverie. Maternal reverie gives them a primary model for reverie as an analytic function. Reverie, as a primary form of representation, can function as a compass in traversing the path towards transformation in the analytic field—but only if and when the analyst allows the patient's psychic material to come into contact with her intuition. A useful analogy for this use of reverie might be that of a stem-cell transplant of the analyst's reverie offered to the patient's unconscious.
