ABSTRACT
Dreams create the illusion of a tangible reality, thus running counter to the common assumption of sleep as primarily a withdrawal from external reality. In recognition of the chance factor in psychoanalysis, which brings together the patient's inner life with sensory perceptions emanating from the analytic encounter, Anna Freud recommended free association as the method most likely to achieve this goal. The importance of the persistence of the emotional reactions linked to sensory experiences of unknown origins is sometimes underestimated as analysts focus on the factors that keep them out of consciousness. The inaccessibility of the sensory memory traces to consciousness leading to the lack of representation of trauma that is frequently portrayed in the literature stands in sharp contrast to the amazing accuracy of the enactments and actualisations of the calamitous events otherwise forgotten. According to Freud, the process constitutes a return to some of the earliest means of realisation, the search for perceptual identity.
