Dreaming, drawing and the dream screen in the psychoanalysis of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy.

Abstract

Solomon has written about the change in emphasis from perceptual to conceptual thinking as being an important part of ego mastery, partly responsible for the establishment of autonomy(21). This paper suggests that a child's drawings, when they serve the function of a dream screen, manifest dream content on it. They can sometimes be used by the child as experimental soundings in the attempt to establish the self and separate from the parental figure, while continuing to maintain the necessary relationship with the mother, and will thus enable the child to struggle with oedipal conflict with a configuration of self-esteem. In summary, then, the analytic material in this case seemed to support the following theses: 1. The processes of "looking" and "seeing" help to mark the boundaries of reality for the very young child. 2. "Not looking" may be used in the same manner that the dream screen is used by adults: to cope with frustration which has both oral and genital determinants, and can sometimes be a regression to the primary process wish fulfillment of a return to mother's breast. 3. The very young child can sometimes most easily communicate his dreams by seeing them on the blank paper and then drawing them and adding the manifest dream content in this way. However, at other times the blank drawing paper functions as if it were a dream screen(14) and then represents the sated satisfaction of falling asleep at mother's breast, and the child produces associations only to the dream screen. These "blank dreams" cause no conscious anxiety, and associations to them may bring feelings of superiority and mild elation. 4. As the child improves and matures, the manifest dream content added on to the dream screen expresses oedipal conflict and the child's attempt at the oedipal solution. In these later instances looking and dreaming become functions of active mastery.