DREAMS AND DREAMING

AS TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA

Simon A. Grolnick

I know how men in exile feed on dreams.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Had I the Heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light.
The blue and dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

Since D. W. Winnicott's fundamental "Transitional Objects and

Transitional Phenomena" (1951) was published, psychoanalysts on both
sides of the ocean have been expanding, refining and integrating its
ordinal concepts and clinical implications. This chapter is an attempt to

confirm and to expand upon Winnicott's suggestion that dreaming is a

transitional phenomenon. He explained that by the time the transitional
object of the infant loses its meaning transitional phenomena have
"become diffused, have become spread out over the whole intermediate
territory between 'inner psychic reality' and 'the external world as
perceived by two persons in common,' that is to say, over the whole
cultural field." Then, to clarify further, after describing his concept of the
"good enough" mother, he lists among the infant's intermediate or
transitional means of coping with this maternal "failure" the following:
"Remembering, reliving, fantasizing, dreaming; the integrating of past,
present and future." Though he did not elaborate in the 1951 paper.
214 SIMON A. GROLNICK

Winnicott had in a 1945 article noted that when the dream is

remembered and communicated to another person, the "dissociation" of
the "child asleep from the child awake" is fostered:

In fact, the waking life of an infant can be perhaps described as a

gradually developing dissociation from the sleeping state. Artistic
creation gradually takes the place of dreams or supplements them, and
is vitally important for the welfare of the individual and therefore for

mankind.

Dreaming and transitional phenomena are both broad concepts; it is

hoped that this discussion will clarify some of their interrelationships.
Winnicott's suggestion will be illustrated, using the psychoanalytic
literature and clinical material, but first it will be necessary to clarify the
spectrum between daydreaming and dreaming. Following this the
implications of dreaming as a transitional phenomenon will be discussed
in an effort to understand certain resistances in the creation and
reporting of dreams. The multileveled differences between "pleasant
dreams" and nightmares will be taken up, as will the question whether
both are active participants in the developmental process or are merely
epiphenomena of it.

CLARIFICATION

The widely variant manifestations of the dream and dreaming are

reflected both in the lexicon and in the psychoanalytic literature.
Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, for example, defines a
"dream" as:

1. A sequence of sensations, images, thoughts, etc., passing through a

sleeping person's mind
2. A fanciful vision or fancy of the conscious mind; daydream; reverie
3. The state, as of abstraction or reverie, in which such a daydream
occurs
4. A fond hope or aspiration
5. Anything so lovely, charming, transitory, etc., as to seem dreamlike

These definitions correspond roughly to the hierarchic states of the

dream-daydream continuum as described in the psychoanalytic litera-
ture. Kubie's statement, "We are never fully awake or asleep," sets the
context, which Arlow elaborates in a recent paper (1969a): "In one part of
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 215

our minds we are daydreaming all the time, or at least all the time we are
awake and a good deal of the time we are asleep." In another paper
(1969b), Arlow writes: "clinical experience demonstrates how daydream-
ing may intrude upon the conscious experience of the individual at all

levels of wakefulness and somnolence." He refers also to the visual

qualities in the fantasies of children and creative individuals, again
accentuating the presence of a fluctuating, hierarchical continuum.

REVIEW AND DISCUSSION OF THE LITERATURE

Though the connection between transitional phenomena and dream-

ing was first suggested by Winnicott in 1951, the psychoanalytic
literature had long before implicitly linked them. One of the clearest
connections was in Freud's important early contribution to the
understanding of the creative process, "Creative Writers and Day-
dreaming" (1908):

Whoever understands the human mind knows that hardly anything is

harder for a manthan to give up pleasure which he has once
experienced. Actually, we can never give anything up; we only
exchange one thing for another. What appears to be a renunciation is
really the formation of a substitute or surrogate. In the same way, the
growing child, when he stops playing, gives up nothing but the link
with real objects; instead of playing, he now phantasies. He builds castles
in the air and creates what are called daydreams^

At a time when there was no clear concept of the separation-

individuation process or of transitional phenomena, Freud wrote about
the intermediate states connecting narcissism with object relations, and
the concrete with the abstract.
Ella Freeman Sharpe (1937) described a patient who dreamed that a
piece of cotton in her mouth seemed to be attached to her inner organs.
While pulling at the cotton, she awoke in terror. Several later variants of
the dream culminated when "the patient again took a hair from her
mouth." However, on this occasion it emerged easily, and no anxiety was
felt in the dream. Sharpe stressed that the elements of "cotton," and
"hair" had not only immense unconscious symbolic significance, but at
the same time "bridged the unconscious fantasy with real experiences
from earliest infancy to late childhood." This suggests textural, cottony
transitional object qualities, the possibility of the mouth and inner
organs serving as intermediate objects (Kestenberg 1971), and implies
 2 .

216 SIMON A. GROLNICK

that a dream with its symbols can serve as a bridge between the present
and the past (Kanzer 1955, Roland 1971), between fantasy experiences
and realistic perceptions.
In Ernest Jones's important essay on the nightmare (1911), he
described the contributions of the dream to mysticism, religion, and,
hence, illusory phenomena:

What is the focus of essential importance is the conclusion that dream

experiences have furnished significant contributions to the developing
conception of the soul, whether of the individual or of supernatural
beings, and especially to its characteristics of existence apart from the
body.

Following Jones, Max Stern and John Mack have studied the bad dream
or nightmare and have attempted to evaluate the effects of dreaming on
the developmental process. In an article on pavor nocturnus. Stern
(1951) suggested that as a result of the intermediate state between
sleeping and waking "the sensation of the reality of the processes
becomes transferred to the residual part of the dream hallucination.
Thus, like real experiences, the hallucinatory dream experiences in pavor
nocturnus exert formative influence throughout life." The very young
child cannot distinguish intense dream from reality experiences, and it is
reasonable to assume that dream trauma and real, repetitive trauma are
treated similarly by the primitive ego. During the period at which early
self- and object-representations are developing and not clearly separated,
the nonhuman environment, the transitional object environment, and
the nighttime dreaming environment become both identificatory
building blocks and catalysts, which can progressively or regressively
influence development. Mack (1965) reflects this concept, though he
does not refer to transitional phenomena directly. Aside from facilitating
instinctual discharge, the nightmare "may also be regarded as amongst
the earliest defensive operations of the immature ego, a kind of
'desperate creativity' aimed at reducing and mastering instinctual
tension." In hisbook Nightmares and Human Conflict Mack (1970) attempts
to assess the nightmare's effects on the formation of psychic structure.
Concerning the dream as a reflection of psychic activity, he is prepared to
say:

perhaps more useful theoretically to look upon the nightmare as a

It is

kind of end product, reflecting a great variety of other forces, some of

which foster adaptation and integration, while others tend to bring
about disintegration or disorganization. . .
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 217

Nightmares, as we have seen, arise in the context of environmental

threat, the revival of traumatic memories, or the thrust of develop-
mental advance, but the outcome of the dream, whether or not it is
followed by integration and mastery or disintegration and further
regression, depends upon the complex interplay of all of the above
forces as they interrelate uniquely in any given instance or individual
situation.

He would see the dream, the nightmare, and the psychosis

writes, "I
more and psychological processes reflecting the state of
as basic psychic
the organism as a whole rather than as serving as such active
instruments of adaptation." Yet Mack stresses how the manifest content
of the dream tends to result "in the formation of new combinations of
percepts and images from the present and from the recent and distant
past." Impressed by the creativity in dreaming, he says, "This creative
elaboration does not cease with the dream work, but proceeds during the
telling of the dream in further imaginative embellishments, a process
related to but extending beyond Freud's secondary revision." He
concludes, "More research is needed regarding the various relationships
between anxiety, dream formation, creativity, mastery, and the
development of psychic structure. "^
In contrast to the nightmare, "pleasant dreaming" has been more or
less taken for granted, and the literature has reflected the view that
pleasant dreams are resistive, or at least defensive operations. Lewinin
the Psychoanalysis of Elation (1961), while speaking of the elated end of the
happy dream spectrum writes: "Dreams with a manifest elated mood are
well known; dreams which contain laughter or that palm themselves as
happy dreams mean the reverse of what they seem to say. They contain
patent death wishes or thoughts of one's own death." This is taken out of
context to some extent and I doubt Lewin ultimately maintained a
reductionistic view of the pleasant dream.
Transitional objects were linked with dreaming and with Lewin's
(1961) concept of the dream screen in a paper by Ralph Greenson (1954).
He described a patient who was making the
obsessively feared that he
sound Mmm. A dream fragment concerning a piece of velvet cloth led to
associations of an active and current transitional object experience.
Greenson wrote, "The manifest dream and latent dream thoughts seem
to indicate that the velvet material could be understood as a dream screen
in accordance with Lewin's ideas on the subject."
Greenson may not have been aware of Winnicott's contribution in
1954, as he did not refer to transitional objects as such; however, his idea
is relevant and suggestive. The dream screen signifies a pure fulfillment
 ^

218 SIMON A. GROLNICK

of the wish to sleep. It is suggested that the dream screen shifts from self-
breast fusion states and then through intermediary phases, during which
visual, tactile,and kinesthetic perceptions of transitional objects are
added to its A patient of mine with inhibitions in
representation.
creativity produced a beautiful, haunting dream image that appeared as if
on a slide projector screen; he wondered how he could have created
something so exquisite.'* The dream (which will not be described in detail)
began in a black and white darkness, in the shade of an elevated railroad.
As the patient sensed he was actually awakening, a vivid technicolored
country scene appeared. Gravestones with ancient inscriptions stood in a
setting with a nostalgic, pastoral beauty. It is significant that the patient,
who suffered early object loss, had been haunted from childhood by fears
of death. His major sublimation had been photography. Associations to
the dream directly identified fears of separation from past and present
relationships as well as the fear of death. The patient experienced the
dream as he were being reborn and entering a new world. In one sense,
if

he had been able to bridge the vale of darkness, sleep, and death with a
progressive new integration within the transitional world of the dream,
the by-product of which was a created, comforting phenomenon,
transitional in nature. There seem to be important implications here can
perhaps be developed in the future.
Muensterberger (1961) in a fundamental paper entitled "The Creative
Process" was fully aware of the close relationships among dreaming,
creativity, and transitional phenomena. With clinical and anthropological
evidence he demonstrates that the creative artist denies, as does the fe-
tishist, both separation and castration. He sees the use of the transitional
object as an opportunity to return to "the illusion of a long remembered
and yet oblivious unity which transcends disconnection." Then he adds,
"It is a paradox to which the dreamer inevitably returns or which the
artist tries to undo." Taking dreaming as a general representational
phenomenon, Muensterberger suggests a more specific connection
among the precursors underlying dreaming, sleep, the imaginative
process, and the creative act:

I believe it can be shown that image formation and representation as

well as the emotional prompting for mastery through magic serve to
deny separation anxiety as well as castration anxiety. This contention
will perhaps shed a brighter light on the creative process in general. It
can be approached by observing the drowsy infant holding on to
substitute representatives of his immediate environment, imaginary
companions be they his thumb, a blanket, a pacifier, or a teddy bear.
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 219

In "The Communicative Function of the Dream" Kanzer (1955)

explicitly traces the links between the dreams and transitional
phenomena in terms of communication and the internalizing process
(particularly the formation of introjects) and from the standpoint of
object relations. To quote a pertinent passage:

Falling asleep not a simple narcissistic regression but the consumma-

is

which the good (oedipal or preoedipal) parent is re-

tion of a conflict in
attached to the ego and the bad eliminated. In anxiety dreams these
endeavors are unsuccessful. The sleeper therefore is not truly alone,
but "sleeps with" his introjected good object. This is evidenced in the
habits of sleepers the physical demand of the child for his parent, of
the adult for his sex partner, and of the neurotic for lights, toys and
rituals as preliminary conditions for sleep.^

At this pointKanzer cites Winnicott's paper on the transitional object

(1951) and makes the crucial distinction between interpersonal
communication and communication with introjects. The former is seen
typically in desires to tell dreams to others, usually someone in the latent
content of the dream, as well as in the frequent dream form taken by
many artistic, poetic, and mythological creations. More complex are the
communications of the sleeper's ego with his introjected objects,
communications involving the dream process itself. Observations made
by other analysts are of interest here. In Dream Analysis Sharpe (1937)
pointed to certain patients who tend to dream with images of parts of the
body or of inanimate objects. After further development during the
analytic process, "Instead of dreams the sole content of which is part of a
whole we shall have instead whole persons whose 'parts' are important."
Mack (1965) relates manifest imagery in dreams to the internalization
process, describing how "shifts in the presentation of the parents can be
observed in the dreams themselves. In the smaller children inanimate
objects, and later animals may be the conveyors of terror, and the
representation of the parents is rudimentary, or occurs according to
certain of their qualities as the child perceives them."
It is entirely possible that a palette full of transitional images as well as

narcissistic and part object images is available to the dreamer, certainly to

the artist. In this sense, the dream is a refueling with representations
first of the original fusions with the part-object breast, then of the

mother, and finally of transitional objects; that is, regression in the

dream occurs at all available developmental levels. Ideally, this royal road
is replete with "comfort stations," each ready to supply a need ranging

anywhere from fusion to object constancy. The transitional object level

220 SIMON A. GROLNICK

may be a major "resting place." The analytic material to be reported later

on should be pertinent here.^
One of the most sophisticated discussions of transitional phenomena
occurs in Judith Kestenberg's important "From Organ-Object Imagery to
Self and Object Representations" (1971). She cogently warns us in a
footnote, "Neither people nor the 'stuff of transitional phenomena from
which dreams are made can be reduced to the status of things. They are
adjuncts of the drive object." Kestenberg divides transitional phenomena
into accessory objects, intermediate objects, and true transitional objects.
I believe that the dream, both as a whole and with reference to its
introjects, can serve any of these functions. The accessory object (who
assists the mother in the care of the infant) "is held onto as a temporal
link of the past with the future ('when Nannie goes, mother will come')."
Linking this with Kanzer's internalized parental images seems a natural
step. Transitional objects are more than blankets (Kestenberg 1971);
"Pets and people, sounds and words, melodies and rhythms, colors and
shapes become part of the world of transitional phenomena and may be
treasured as personal possessions which re-create 'something old' within
the context of 'something new.'" According to Kestenberg, intermediate
objects are bodily products which serve as "bridges" between the child
and his mother. The inanimate and animate objects around the child are
subsequently imbued with their qualities. "He treats them as if they too
had come out of his body and externalizes them upon the qualities of
feeling from the inside of his body. They too become intermediate
objects." Dreams also can qualify here. They arise from the interior of
the body and the self, can have good and bad, clean and unclean qualities,
can be treasured, and also intermingle with the world of play and
imagination, serving as nocturnal babysitters.

CLINICAL EVIDENCE

The data from a psychoanalysisshould provide additional evidence for

the premise of this chapter. A single engineer in his early
forties sought
out a city analyst after having been in analytically oriented therapy on
the couch for several years, with what he considered good results.
However, he realized he had not been able to control his anxiety
adequately or improve his relationships sufficiently to marry. The
change of therapists was attributed to a move into the city which
precluded the late evening visits to his suburban psychiatrist.
The patient's difficulties were characterized as a limitation in his
capacity to feel, episodic anxiety attacks accompanied by the fear of
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 221

mild duodenal ulcer, difficulty in nnaking decisions (which

falling apart, a
had a claustrophobiccomponent) and an inability to find a permanent
love partner. He dated frequently but whenever the relationship drifted
toward the serious, he backed down. His rhetorical style included a
forced expressiveness that nevertheless had its own basic flatness, with
compulsive and stilted qualities.
Early in the analysis, his manner of experiencing, revealing, and
working with dreams became the principal feature of the manifest
his
analytic content. I was treated to an elaborate network of intellectual-
ized, learned dream interpretation; affect was defended against in the
transference, especially the anxiety concerning his passive, helpless
position in the analytic situation, with its homosexual implications.

My first reaction was one measured skepticism concerning these

of
secondary and tertiary elaborations and exegeses. I attempted to
interpret the resistance against affect in general and against the
transference specifically. Suggesting that his interpretations were
created to ward off a fear of my words, implied his need to control the
I

analytic situation. If anything, his dream web tightened; he became

protective of his version of The Interpretation of Dreams, as if would censor 1

it, distort it, deprecate it, even rob him of it. He accused me of a virtually

inexcusable lack of empathy and understanding. I realized that he was

correct.
From that point, I no matter how
resisted the temptation to interpret,
frustrating his pedantic journeys became. he was able to continue
At last
his story and therefore communicate its latent meaning. What unfolded
was an annotated spoken text, with themes and counterthemes, a
complex cross-reference system involving his previous dreams and their
interpretations. Manifest content moved directly into explanation
without free association. "Water dreams," "fire dreams," "female
dreams," "homosexual dreams," "basketball dreams" were elaborately
correlated and followed. Footnotes almost hovered over the couch.
Then a story line emerged, a series of developing themes, each
converging toward an anticipated finale concurrent with the end of the
analysis. A birth process was evident, of which he himself was aware.
The patient frequently reassured both of us that the end was in sight.
Dreams were omens, portents, signs of our progress. "We're a couple of
good dreams away from my true feelings."
When asked him to associate to this dream story, he recalled that he
I

had treasured his father's telling of elaborate bedtime stories, both

original and traditional. Apparently they were oases in a stormy
relationship with his borderline mother, who alternated between
seductiveness, hostility, and depression.
 ^

222 SIMON A. GROLNICK

The plot thickened when he first mentioned that he recorded each

dream upon awakening, keeping a "dream book" by his bedside, virtually
at his pillow. As more background information emerged, I concluded that
the operational "resistance" was his attempt to hold on to the concrete-
abstract, fantasy-reality dream saga that both represented and was a
transitional phenomenon. When I acknowledged my previously conf isca-
tive interpretations and shifted to a more empathic understanding of the
adaptive and developmental aspects of his manner of dealing with his
dreams, he seemed greatly relieved. He felt I understood at last. The
frantic dream analysis waned significantly (though it returned periodi-
cally) in proportion to an increase in the depth of the therapeutic alliance.
There were strong hints that the struggle we were having over his
dreams recapitulated early battles concerning his use of transitional
objects and parts of his body (penis and feces) which had transitional
object significance. His mother who gradually emerged as an intrusive
and perfectionistic Craig's wife, had trained the patient prematurely.
Dream stories, dream jottings, dream rememberings served to connect
the various facets of his life while repression eliminated a sense of
connection to his past, contributing to a defect in his sense of identity.
One therapy was linked to the other by this exegetical bridge. Even the
time between sessions was tied together with the silken strands of dream
themes, just as the journey from the point of falling asleep to the moment
of waking was connected by a pathway of dreams. A dreamless night was
experienced as a frightening void.^ In fact, the patient stated that he
would prefer a night of painful dreams to a dreamless one. Dreams were
time indicators, milestones, but were at times more ephemeral, like soap
bubbles, or cartoon bubbles emanating from the couch.
I have stressed this patient's characteristic manner of understanding,

communicating, and associating to his dreams and their transitional

object significance. But the manifest dream content itself seemed of
equivalent importance. A fairy-tale, magical quality persisted. Burlap
turned into silk in one dream; the theme of metamorphosis was
recurrent. The following dreams will be discussed with special emphasis
on the theses of this paper, with no attempt at covering all their aspects.

TWO DREAMS
The patient described one of his many animal dreams: "I was watching
a a bird and a horse. The bird attacked the horse's testicles with his
man,
beak. Then turned around and heard a sawing sound. When looked,
I I

something was sawing away at the horse's penis." The patient spoke of
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 223

how he had written down the dream. He had awakened, nearly in a panic,
worried about having a heart attack. This reminded him that the
previous day while playing tennis he had feared he might overexert
himself and have a heart attack. The dream was "quite a nightmare." It
reminded him of a dream in which he had asked for a helping hand, and of
the phrase, "lend me a hand." When he spoke of the fear of the previous
night that accompanied his awakening from the dream, he felt a pain in
his chest. More indirect associations to the dream included his painful
reactions to the impending threat of separation from his current girl
friend. The bird was associated to his mother's having constantly told
him that he ate like a bird, which recalled his struggles with her
concerning his eating habits. After that the patient informed me that he
was worried about his dream awakenings and wondered if I would
prescribe a tranquilizer in case insomnia might lie ahead. He reminded
me that he feels safe when he carries one and that his previous therapist
had provided them whenever necessary. Then, when he realized they
were not forthcoming, he began, rather characteristically, to recreate his
earlier associative style, elaborating at length on the "castration dream"
he had experienced and how this linked in with innumerable others.
I interrupted him, saying that the dream was peopled with both
humans and animals, that the casting made it sound a little like a fairy
tale. He responded that it did seem so, that he found the manner in which

he was telling me the dream reminiscent of the beginnings of his father's

bedtime stories, lo
Clearly this multi-determined dream and its associative sequence can
be "listened to" with a number of previously determined sets, ranging
from a complete free-floating attention to a selective searching for
specific themes (Spence and Lugo 1972). The patient's level of early
regression and fixation and the clinical phenomena warrant a reading
organized around the transitional object level of his experience. It can be
reconstructed that as a child the patient experienced nightmares which
were attempts to discharge affects and drives during a time when he was
terrified of separation and of being engulfed and penetrated by a
witchlike mother. His father, the fairy tales, and eventually the dreams
and daydreams themselves served as safety valves and lifesavers in a sea
of anxiety. My patient's dream and its related phenomena seem to be
alloys ofboth the nightmare and his defensive efforts to bind the anxiety
and turn it into a fairy tale, a euphemistic nightmare. Further inquiry
about his statement that it was a nightmare did not reveal the typical
symptoms described by Mack and Jones.
Many of this patient's dreams were well stocked with inanimate
objects, abstractions, games (basketballs going through hoops, tennis
224 SIMON A. GROLNICK

balls passing back and forth over a net, a game with no players). He
frequently dreamed of swimming with large, inflated rubber toys. This
seemed related to suppressed memories of water play with actual rubber
toys and probably surreptitious masturbation during a period of anxiety
concerning bath and toilet experiences with his overwhelming mother.
On another occasion he described a "nightmare" which was actually
experienced as a mild anxiety dream. "I was being chased by a woman in
my room. I ran into my parents' bedroom and saw them in bed under the
covers. I tried to get under the covers for consolation." At the time I was
impressed by the vagueness of his description. When I asked him to
clarify the images in the dream, it occurred to him that he could not
actually see his parents. The bed could have been stuffed with pillows,
and was covered with a pink blanket. It was tucked in so tight he could not
enter his father's side of the bed. His associations related how his mother
went to work when he was only nine months old. At other times she was
not available for comfort. The pink blanket reminded him that even now,
before sleep, he would continue to finger the satin edge of his blanket and
that he had done this for as long as he could remember. This was the first
time he had spoken of a direct current transitional object experience.
Then he added that the same fingering motion occurred when he played
with the "pinky" fingers of his girl friends. A soft, plump pinky especially
pleased him.

DISCUSSION

The circle closed. The absent or nonconsoling mother is substituted for

by blanket and pillow, and this transitional experience, not sufficiently
internalized into structure (Tolpin 1971), is fetishistically displaced onto
his love object in the present. The dream itself, aside from its specific
content, enters the world of transitional phenomena and illusion, along
with its "cover story," which renders it both a nightmare and not a
nightmare; the vagueness of the experience provides an ambiguousness
in which fairy tales can "come true." The secondary revision serves as a
blanket; it is defensive, but simultaneously consoling and soothing, in the
transitional object sense.
As the analysis progressed, I realized that on another level his dreams
were anthropomorphized. They were friends, seers, guides used as
magical clouds pointing him to a promised land.i^ "This dream says," or
"that dream tells me that in a few months this problem will clear up." The
dream companion was described as if it were his externalized penis,
which he referred to as a separate person who could urinate, stand erect
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 225

and virtually think. It seemed to possess its own volition. The penis was
at once plaything and playmate, an object he toyed with while fantasying
during his frequent childhood and adolescent masturbation. Now a good
dream seemed like a good erection (the expected anal level good bowel
movement did not appear at this time in his associations). He offered his
dream to me as himself, but also as a play object for us. On another level it
was his penis for me to play with. Yet it did not seem that the dream as a
penis was both a phallic and a transitional object.
The "good" or potent dream as a good omen participated simultane-
ously as a magical phallic horse which would fly him to a bountiful,
blissful world, but also functioned as a transitional bridge. He wanted to
play with the dream blanket and to allow me to play with it by means of
my interpretations. The homosexual aspect of this desire was certainly
present, but the operational level appeared to be that of the mutual play
between mother and child (Winnicott 1971, pp. 38-52). We could share
the blanket and toys which served as a substitute; at the same time they
could be used as a bridge back to the mother during the need for
rapprochement. It would seem that the latent meaning of the preference
for games and toys in the manifest content of his dreams was present in
the communication, "play with me." In an intellectualized manner, the
patient persistently interpreted the basketballs entering hoops and
tennis balls colliding into nets as references to sexual acts; these he
described as genital or phallic. Yet the operative level again seemed an
earlier one, where the dreams occupied the intersubjective space of a
symbiosis-separation-individuation continuum, serving alternatively as
part of theself, a blanket, toys, and imaginary companions. The patient's

use of genital symbolism to represent an earlier developmental level of

union is reminiscent of the use of genital symbols and ritual coitus to
represent a communion with the gods of primitive religions (Goldberg
1930).

FURTHER DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

My patient's dreams and dream elaborations served both defensive and

transitional object needs. Bridges that served him well during his
struggles with the separation-individuation process were revived when
he was faced with the isolation and deprivation of the analytic situation.
Of course the profuse dream production had a simultaneously anal,
phallic and exhibitionistic significance. The dreams also were attempts at
repairing a disrupted body image, i.e., the dreams themselves, in toto,

had phallic, anal, and body meaning, as did their internal symbols.
226 SIMON A. GROLNICK

The stress in this chapter, however, has been to demonstrate that

dreams and secondary elaborations as well as the dream process itself
provide nightly available transitional phenomena which offer a bridge
between the self and the object, and a means of rejoining the comforting,
"pleasant dreams" aspect of the parents. Conceivably, each night the
dream, part introjected parent, part dreamer, is held, savored, and
possibly recreated by the child's ego at a higher developmental level.
Then it is given up and laid aside until the next evening, repeating the
daytime use of transitional objects as developmental guide posts which
assist the traversal of the difficult course between symbiosis and the
establishment of object constancy. Once this latter stage is to some
extent attained, the dream vehicle allows nightly ego regression to
organ-object fusion, providing a refueling which helps to maintain stable
self and object-representations (Kestenberg 1971).
My patient's special early development included an inconsistent
mother who seriously delayed object constancy while her devouring and
penetrating qualities led to both castration anxiety and the fear of body
annihilation. The normal transitional functions of the dream were
intensified and its recall and elaboration became obligatory and f etishistic

in nature. To speculate further, it could be said that for this patient

dreaming was so involved in a fetishistic-like service that it could not
function as a bridge to creativity (Giovacchini 1966). Interestingly, some
increased capacity for creative performing and experiencing did occur as
the patient's dream world lost its intensity.
My patient presented a dream barrier that functioned simultaneously
as a dream blanket, or a transitional phenomenon that made the analytic
situation tolerable. As noted, his early developmental difficulties
contributed to a special circumstance where dreaming approached a
fetishistic phenomenon. However, to the extent the separation-
individuation process never fully attains a "happy ending," dreaming can
always serve a transitional phenomenon function, in either a healthy
developmental sense or an obligatory one. If the analyst is aware of this,
he is less likely to offer premature resistance interpretations and actually
intensify a developmental "resistance" to the premature loss of a needed
substitute object.
My patient required a period of time to work with his own dreams,
even if on another functioned as a transference resistance to
level this
affect. My initial interpretations were experienced as if his transitional
blanket had been appropriated, changed, even washed or purified before
its loss could be tolerated. I believe our current mode of dream

interpretation will be enhanced by taking this phenomenon into account.

Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 227

NOTES
1. In the same paper Freud showed the continuum between
daydreams and night dreaming.
2. Byron in his poem of unrequited love, loss and madness, "The
Dream," writes of his dreams:

They do divide our being; they become a

Portion of ourselves as of our time.
And look like heralds of eternity;

They pass like spirits of the past they speak
Like Sibils of the future

3. In his intriguing analysis of universal mythological themes, Joseph

Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces allows the wisdom of the ages to
suggest whether dreaming can promote growth and development. He
describes the heroes' crossing of the return threshold from the other
world, pointing out how he frequently returns unchanged from this
metaphorical dream world. Rip Van Winkle awakens "with nothing to
show for the experience" but his whiskers.The Irish hero, Oisin, returns
from a long sojourn in the dream equivalent of the land of youth, but
accidentally touches the earth with one foot. He immediately loses the
steed that kept him in magical space, and turns into an old man. (The
return from Shangri-La in Hilton's novel provokes a similar fate.)
However, a contrasting view is presented in the Arabian Nights story,
the Tale of Prince Kamar Al-Zaman. The Prince "experienced while
awake the bliss of deep sleep, and returned to the light of day with such a
convincing talisman of his unbelievable adventure that he was able to
return his self-assurance in the face of every sobering disillusionment."
The talisman was a ring that symbolized the heroes' attempt to unite the
earthly and godly spheres.
4. Giovacchini (1966) and Kohut (1971) describe dreams which were
experienced by their patients in a similar manner.
5. Hamilton (1969) has suggested that "object loss leads to a
regressive fusion with the lost object and that the dream becomes an
integral part of this process having originally been utilized by the infant
to cope with the loss of direct oral gratification during sleep." He
demonstrates in his paper on Keats how the poet externalized his dreams
in the form of poems. "Because of the intense ambivalence and
hypercathexis of the introject, this method was only partially successful
and, having to be repeated over and over again, led to one of the richest,
most profuse creative efforts in all of literature."
6. See an early pioneer in the understanding of dreams, folklorist-
poet Charles Godfrey Leland, in his first book The Poetry and Mystery of
Dreams (1856) for an interesting related point of view: "These instances, I
228 SIMON A. GROLNICK

believe are neither few nor far between, in which dreams have given to
the affhcted, positive comfort and encouragement during their waking
hours. The features of the loved who have long been parted from us
either by accident or death, are thus renewed or revivified far more
sympathetically than can be done by the most accurate portrait, while to
the lover despairing of his lady's favour, a pleasant dream often holds
forth hopes not less stimulating than her smiles. All, it is true, are not
gifted with such vivid imaginations as to frequently experience these
sweet delusions, but they have in every age existed to such a degree that
the world has never wanted races who held with religious faith that

'Departed spirits at their will

Could from the Land of Souls pass to and fro.
Coming to us in sleep when all is still.'"

7. Irving Harrison's "A Dream Followed by Elation," (1960) noted

that "the windows, the white paper like a blank sheet, the picture frame
and the pane of glass are all dream screen equivalents and all symbolize
for the patient the breast (penis). Such regressive, hallucinatory revivals
represent intermediate steps on the way to the blank screen."
It should be stated that some of the formulations in the literature and

in this chapter use the manifest content of the dream. Conceivably

during rapid developmental change or difficulty the manifest symbols in
dreams more closely reflect the general state of object relations; i.e.,
"presymbolic images" may be present, providing direct gratification as
well as reflecting primary process needs. This is not to contradict their
simultaneous use as symbols with referents in the latent content of the
dream. Symbols in dreams not only have "horizontal" ambiguity and
multiple associative connections, but may be the apex of a "pyramid,"
with fusion levels "topped" by the substitute object, then the transitional
object and ultimately the symbol, which itself includes the spectrum of
concrete to abstract levels of meaning.
8. The night can be cold and threatening to the child and his parents,
both of whom project their terrors into it. A culture provides rituals to
help cope with this universal anxiety and offers transitional bridges
between falling asleep and waking. The parent reassures that a pathway
of dream stepping stones will be pleasant, secure ones. Popular songs,
which rarely mention nightmares, tell us to dream when we are feeling
blue. But the advice can be insufficient. Eugene Field (1949) said it
humorously in "Seein' Things":

Mother tells us Happy dreams! and takes away the light.

An' leaves me lyin' alone 'an seein' things at night.

The attempted reassurance, "If I should die before I wake, I pray the
Lord my soul to take," also falls short of success. Little Boy Blue, who
looks after the sheep, is mercifully allowed to remain in his dream world:
Dreams and Dreaming as Transitional Phenomena 229

Will you wake him, no, not I

For I do he'll be sure to cry.
if

The child is asked to count sheep to protect him from lying awake and
anxious at the brink, thus supplying him a cute, wooly companion during
the night journey, just as during the day his actual stuffed animals and
toys travel with him while shopping with mother or going to nursery
school. The vampires, night fiends (Jones 1911), and witches on
broomsticks that crisscross the night abyss vie with his friendly
companions and steeds. Mary Webb in her novel. Precious Bane (1924),
warns us to "saddle your dreams after you ride 'em," and Emily
Dickinson's horses' heads are turned toward eternity, providing a
comforting destination on the other side. Yeats's (1959) "Horses of
Disaster" are hidden by the comfort of the twilight state in a relevant
poem. In it he asks his lover to let "your hair fall on my breast/Drowning
loves lonely hour in deep twilight of rest." It seems that the fears of the
night, loneliness and separation including early conceptualizations of
death are mollified by the parent, the child, and, in a special sense, the
poet. Frightening animal symbols are transformed into comforting,
furry domesticated ones, nocturnal counterparts to the stuffed and real
pets of the day. The dream and its related phenomena are an arena for
this struggle between the comforting and the terrifying. Winning
provides a base for future, structured, internalized self-comfort (Tolpin
1971).
9. Winnicott (1945): "The subject of illusion is a very wide one that
needs study; it will be found to provide the clue to a child's interest in
bubbles and clouds and rainbows and all mysterious phenomena."
10. The patient could not recall any original or retold fairy tale with
these characters. An interesting speculation, however, is The Little
Green Frog, as described in Andrew Lang's The Yellow Fairy Book (1894). A
king was despondent and ill grieving over the death of his queen. He had
difficulty in breathing: "Perhaps the worst pain he had to bear was a sort
of weight on his chest which made it very hard for him to breathe." The
prince tried to save his father by stealing a magic horse in order to help
him to find the magic bird, which was brilhantly colored and bejewelled.
In an appointed place, the bird was not to be found but in its stead a
maiden called Serpentine. At one time she had existed in the form of a
frog who had been advising the prince. Finally the bird is captured with
Serpentine's aid, and the king is cured in the nick of time. Then, at last,
the bird is revealed as the lost queen and the two couples are reunited in a
typical happy ending.
11. Lord Byron, who both savored and dreaded the black nightmare
experience, personalized the dream similarly in "The Dream," Stanza 1:

Our life is twofold. Sleep hath its own world.

A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world.
230 SIMON A. GROLNICK

And a wide realm of wild reality.

And dreams in their development have breath
And tears and tortures and the touch of joy.

Also see Leland (1856): In a fairy-tale sketch, God decides to give man
the dream at the beseeching of Guardian Angel of the World. Because
God feels that man is not all bad, at times his "heart is ready to receive the
good which a light external aid might fix upon him!" God says to the
Angel, "Give him the Dream." Then "the sweet Guardian flew over the
world with his sister, the Dream. Far and wide they spread their gentle
influence, and the hearts of life-weary mortals were rejoiced."

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