ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some aspects of the struggle involved in keeping oneself open to fresh perceptions of the meaning and use of softness-hardness cues in personal development. It focuses on the appearance of softness-hardness qualities in dream life and how these qualities reflect actual or potential shifts in self-feeling. The patients involved often tended to disregard or ward off experiencing the genuinely new nuances of self-feeling to which their dreams might give rise. Jane was a patient who had passed through many therapists and was caught in a vicious, destructive process. Jane dreamt that she opened a tin can of cat food. She took out the food and served it on the sharp edge of the tin can. A fairly vegetative, middle-aged woman, Kaye, a veteran of clinics, had been striving to get her life together. The dream, rather, was showing a solid, underlying ground hidden by a soft cover or persona.
