ABSTRACT
This chapter explains to oneself how one works as a psychoanalyst, how one conceives of what one is doing in the consulting room, and what one aspires to in one's work is a lifelong task. It addresses specific aspects of psychoanalytic work, and comprises a comprehensive, balanced statement of a theory of technique. Reverie, like the manifest content of dreams, is an aspect of conscious experience that is intimately connected with unconscious experience. One must struggle to "hold on to" one's reverie experience before it is "reclaimed" by the unconscious. Metaphor is an integral part of the attempt of two people to convey to one another a sense of what each is feeling in the present moment and what one's past experience felt like in the past. Reverie is a process in which metaphors are created that give shape to the analyst's experience of the unconscious dimensions of the analytic relationship.
