Direct interpretation of dreams: Some basic principles and technical rules

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, VoL 52, No. 2, 1992

DIRECT INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS: SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES AND TECHNICAL RULES

Leland van den Daele

The premise that the dream aims to communicate and not to disguise is a technical principle embraced by a large and eclectic group of analysts. These include Carl Jung (1984), Erich Fromm (1951), Walter Bonime (1962), and members of the existential school (Boss, 1963; Kelman, 1971 ). The central premise that dreams do not dissimulate is the foundation of the author's method of direct interpretation. The dream communicates through direct portraiture, metonymy, symbolism, metaphor, simile, and the full range of methods available to figurative speech. In this paper, some of the basic technical principles and rules that govern the translation of dream images into discursive knowledge by direct interpretation are described. Some of these rules have been implicit or explicit in earlier technical approaches, and some are new.

Together these rules have been applied to several hundred dreams of doctoral clinical students and patients. Recently, the method was evalu- ated in an exploratory study of 23 doctoral students and their dreams (van den Daele, 1991a). All students had at least six months of individual psy- chotherapy or psychoanalysis and one to seven years of clinical experience. Each student presented at least one dream during a semester-long seminar, without information about the age, history, life circumstances, or current issues of the dreamer at the time of the dream. At the time of its presentation, the author applied direct interpretation to each dream.

At the conclusion of the term or at follow-up, 23 students anonymously rated the author's blind interpretation of his or her dream for "accuracy and completeness" on a 5-point Likert scale. The majority of these dreams were the student's own dreams. In all, comparisons and evaluations were rendered for 18 dimensions that ranged from general comparisons of interpretive accuracy for past supervisors and therapists to specific characteriza-

Portions of this paper were delivered at the Eleventh Annual Spring Meeting of the American Psychological Association Division of Psychoanalysis. Chicago, Illinois: April, 1991.

LELAND VAN DEN DAELE, Ph.D., is a professor of Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology.

Address correspondence to: Leland van den Daele, California School of Professional Psy- chology, 6212 Ferris Square, San Diego, CA 92121.

99 0002-9548/92/0600-0099506.50/1 © 1992 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

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tions of interpersonal relations in early childhood. The mean rating for interpretative accuracy across all dimensions was "Excellent, Superior, Sig- nificant" with more than two thirds of students rating some dimensions of interpretation "Exceptional, Extraordinary."

The latter rating was employed because the concordance of interpretation with unrevealed aspects of the dreamer's life history, inner conflicts, and current state were often so remarkable and complete as to require this unusual description. Nevertheless, the results of this study are suggestive only. The ratings of the students could have been influenced by their student status or by transference wishes; and the interpretations of the author, by other knowledge or observation. These objections seem unlikely to the author because the students from whom the dreams were obtained tend to be highly critical in teacher evaluations; and little was known about the individual histories. Still, an unconfounded test of direct interpretation requires a double-blind investigation. 1

Direct interpretation rests upon the following assumptions: First, dreams do not dissimulate. The dream aims to communicate through image, metonymy, synecdoche, and symbolism. Second, association is subordi- nate to dream imagery and syntax. The dream itself provides a whole state- ment, and association amplifies its meaning. Third, amodal features of the dream, epitomized in dream mood, intensity, and tempo, provide significances that contribute to the dream as a whole. Fourth, the import of a dream element is context-dependent. Each and every element of a dream makes a contribution to the dream as a totality. Fifth, one and only one interpretation is correct. Sixth, dreams are of different types and the suc- cessful interpretation of a dream requires the proper assignment of a dream to a dream type. Seventh, different types of dreams possess different conventions of symbol and metaphoric arrangement. The first five assumptions are discussed below, and the last two assumptions are discussed in Hunt (1989) and van den Daele (in press).

DIRECT INTERPRETATION AND FREUD'S METHOD

In his Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud explored a number of methods of translation of the dream into ordinary language. Freud's technique of dream interpretation rests upon three conceptually independent components. These are his method of association, his avowal of symbols, and his observations about dream syntax. Interpretation through association contrasts with interpretation through the use of symbol and syntax. These approaches constitute very different foundations for dream interpretation. One is the network idea implied in association, and the other is the semio- tic approach implied in a glossary of symbols and rules about grammar.

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Association was employed by Freud because he contended the dream image was determined, to a significant extent, by idiosyncratic features of thought and experience. For Freud, the image provides a starting place for a series of associations that leads deeper into an underlying web of determinants (1900, pp. 311-312). Freud appeared to favor the implicit view that the associational process eventuates in a decomposition of the dream element to some root constituent. The root constituent is either derivative or a direct reflection of some dream thought (1900, pp. 311-312).

Freud's method of association is in diametric contrast to his use of symbols and syntax. A dream symbol portrays its referent and dream syntax embodies the relation of underlying thoughts. In Freud's theory, symbol and syntax remain largely invariant across dreams. In this sense, there is no disguise. Whenever Freud grappled with the deep antinomy of these approaches with their profound implications about the nature of the unconscious, he subordinated his working rules of symbols and syntax to association. The antimony of these approaches was left unreconciled, as if the unconscious sometimes made use of one set of rules for representation and sometimes another. If, in fact, the unconscious makes use of one set of conventions, then another, it is important to identify the conditions when one or the other is employed, but Freud's theory of dream interpretation is essentially a unitary theory, and therefore, the confusion remains.

Image-Based and Derivative Association

In contrast, direct interpretation engenders no strong antimony between dream translation by reference to association or by reference to symbol and syntax. The method distinguishes between two general types of association: "inclusive" or image-based association and "exclusive" or derivative association. All dream images whether these are idiosyncratic or more generally shared are subject to both types of association.

Direct interpretation requires that association is first image-based, and later derivative. Image-based association arises from examination of the image and the delineation of aspects, elements, features, and significances implicit or contained in the image. Always the image serves as a reference for the exploration of significations that are embodied within the image. Any association is checked back to the image for validity. By contrast, derivative association leads outside the image to ideas and thoughts that are once, twice, or n times removed from the dream image itself.

Image-based association requires sustained attention to the dream image. No detail of a dream image is irrelevant. A single image may contain multiple dimensions that reference state of mind, attitudes, feelings, expectations, distortions, and relation to self and other. What may appear as a

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minor nuance in the image's representation may have a large significance. Image-based association is congruent with the ideas that within the particular is the general; within the one, the many; and within the simple, the complex. These ideas are met in meditation-based disciplines that require attention to the particular.

The pursuit of thought by linkage of derivative associations may subvert the interpretive process by the introduction of a surfeit of ideas unrelated to the dream context. A similar process occurs if one associates to material in a novel. The associative process soon leads far afield from the text that it was intended to clarify. In particular, a therapeutic formulation may ex- ploit this "drift" to fit a preconception. The image is assimilated to the therapeutic formulation rather than the therapeutic formulation assimilated to the image. Interpretive distortion of this sort is more likely when the image is comprehended in only a general way without regard to its image- based specific details.

Properly employed, derivative association possesses a vital role in dream comprehension. Once a dream image is comprehended by image-based association, derivative association reveals parallels, analogies, similarities, and relations to aspects of the individual's life and experience. The value of derivative association is related to the depth and completeness of image- based association. Consequently, the use of association in the interpretation of a dream image ought to proceed in two stages with image-based association preceding derivative association.

In the clinical situation, the analysand is first enjoined to describe as completely as possible with as much detail as possible the feelings, moods, tempo, coloration, and orchestration of images and events in the dream. Next, he is asked to report images, thoughts, or feelings that come to mind when a dream image or element is kept in mind. If in doubt, the analyst inquires whether the association arose from the image or something related to the image. Finally, the analysand is inquired to freely associate to image-based material. This ordinarily provides derivative association.

Collaterals

In direct interpretation, associations that link three or more images, re- membrances, or ideas together are termed collaterals. Collaterals derived from dreams often provide particularly rich sources for therapeutic investigation, but unless the collateral is strongly unified by mood or theme, only the first few associations typically have relevance to the meaning of a dream image.

In an idiosyncratic image, the first two or three associations have partic-


ular significance because these are not far removed from the dream image. The dream story provides context and delimits plausible associations. As discussed in a later section of this paper, context is at least as important in the determination of the significance of a symbol as the associations to a symbol. This is not to suggest that lengthy and exhaustive association to some dream image is not useful. The process may generate information that is highly significant to the course of psychotherapeutic investigation and treatment. However, lengthy association is not required for clarifica- tion of dream meaning.

NATURE AND TYPES OF DREAM IMAGES

Dream images vary from identical renditions of images of earlier experienced persons, places, or things to images never experienced and whose significance is obscure. Within these limits is a range of types. In the first column of Table 1, three major groups of images are distinguished. These are images that are direct depictions, of an "experienced" reality, images categorized as metanomies, synecdoches, condensations, or allusions that contain some feature or element of an "experienced" reality, and images that are purely symbols that possess no such obvious immediate or perceptual counterpart.

TABLE 1. Correspondence Between Figural Speech, Dream Verisimilitude, and Complexity*

Complexity Structural-

Phenomenal Single Thematic Veri-similitude Elements Schema Wholes

Identical Direct Functional Scenarios Depictions Relations;

Concatenations Intermediate Metonym ies Metaphors Stories

Synecdoche Similes Parables Condensations

Allusions Remote Symbols Allegories

*The relation of dream images (manifest content) to dream referents (latent content) is analogous to the relation of figurai speech to its referents. See text for discussion.

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Direct Representation

The dream image possesses fidelity to its significance. When a person, place, or thing is itself in a dream, it is that person, place, or thing and not some other. When an aspect of a person, place, or thing is itself in a dream, it is that aspect and not some other. When a person, place, or thing is a composite of two or more persons, places, or things, it is that composite and not some other.

These assertions differ from Freud's position that the direct representation of a person, place, or thing in a dream may mean either itself, or refer to some association sometimes distally removed from the dream image, or mean its opposite. His view that an image may mean itself or its opposite relied on his theoretical distinction between primary and secondary processes. Freud assumed that the primary process did not distinguish between affirmation and negation, but that this competence was associated with the secondary process. Secondary process, he believed, was a rela- tively late civilizational achievement built on primary process and cited philological evidence that traces words of opposite meaning to a common root (1900, p. 318).

Several problems arise with Freud's position. First, Freud's stance about negation appears inconsistent with arguments he advances elsewhere that dreams may represent other logical operations such as " i f . . . then" (impli- cative) relations and "and" (conjunctive) relations (1900, pp. 312-320). If a dream may represent such binary logical operations, it certainly may represent monary logical operations, such as negation (Reichenbach, 1947). Second, Freud considered the work of dream formation and representation more "primitive" (primary process) than conscious thought (secondary process). This view begs the question. Dream formation and representation may be every bit as sophisticated and complex as conscious thought. Third, philological evidence applies to the foundations of language, not dream material. The association of dream iconography with the foundation of spoken language is gratuitous at best. Fourth, Freud's premise leads to confusion. "Negation" may mean either "not" or "opposite" the thing represented. If negation means "not" the thing represented, then the thing is absent only. However, if negation means "opposite," then negation may mean some other thing and therefore imply some presence (Brown, 1969).

Metanomies and Synecdoche, Allusions and Condensations

An image based on a direct rendition of experience may be depicted only in part and, in the dream, represents a feature particularly associated


with that part. Two classical forms of representation are metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymy, a part is used to stand for a whole, and in synecdoche, a more inclusive term is used to stand for a less inclusive term, or vice versa. An allusion suggests some associated image or images. A condensation or composite identifies a fusion or juxtapostion of discrete images that serves to coordinate multiple references.

The significance of metanomies, synecdoches, condensations, and allusions may be revealed by image-based or derivative association. In all cases, however, the representation of some feature of knowledge by a part- image or composite has significance in itself. That is, the dream intends that that feature be emphasized. The whole or more inclusive reference is always constrained by the significances evoked by the image. For example, by image-based association, "George's pipe" may concretize Georges "biting, rigid, clenched, fixed" demeanor in terms of life's events. By derivative association, the feature may represent a general personality characteristic that belongs to George, such as "self-absorbed self-preoccupation." In these instances, the whole or more inclusive reference resides in the amplification by association of the dream image.

Akin to part-images that represent some associated dimension or aspect are composites and condensations that combine two or more part-images. For example, by image-based association, the part-image of "Fred's hat" may suggest "a rumpled state," and by derivative association, the "middle class conformism of an earlier generation." Then the image of "a man with Fred's hat and George's pipe" may be translated in two nonexc[usive ways: First by image-based association or in a "proximal" sense as "a biting, rigid, clenched, fixed, rumpled state that pertains to a man"; and second, by derivative association or in a "distal" sense as "a self-absorbed self- preoccupied middle-class man whose values and attitudes belong to a for- mer era."

Signs and Symbols

Jung (1956) contrasts a "sign" that is arbitrary and depends on custom for its significance to a "symbol" that is nonarbitrary. A sign is arbitrary because it arises through mere convention, and, in principle, may be substi- tuted for any other sign by agreement. A symbol is nonarbitrary because it contains or references the content it betokens. Although nonarbitrary, a sign tends to convey a narrower range of meaning than a symbol because convention "fixes" its reference. The use of signs principally occurs in languages modeled on speech. The use of symbols occurs in hieroglyphics patterned on the objects portrayed.

From this point of view, all dream images are symbols because dream

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images are not arbitrary in the sense that applies to signs in conventional languages. Even reality-based direct representations are symbols since reality-based experience, itself, is mediated by some partial or particularized representation of the person, place, or thing represented. Yet there are symbols and then there are symbols. Symbols that display an individu- alized, direct reference to experience are symbols with a small "s" and those that display a collective and sometimes more obscure relation are symbols with a large "S".

Jung (1956) typically used the term symbol for Symbols with a large "S'. [n agreement with Freud, Jung viewed symbols as images constellated by instincts. Therefore, the source of symbols was internal, and since instincts are common to humankind, symbols are "collective." He differed from Freud in a far broader view of unconscious instincts and their foundations (Jung, 1966).

Common cultural experience also plays a central role in the formation of common symbols. In dream imagery, the image of a "car" is typically a symbol for the self (Stekel, 1911; Bonime, 1962). This image could not have occurred before the invention of cars, so experience is involved. Al- though a collective symbol, the connection between a car as an image and the self is not necessarily obvious. The connection is not based on immediate phenomenal similarity. How then does experience mediate between the image "car" and its reference "self"? The connection is mediated by broad congruences of car-experience and self-experience.

Car-experience may be represented from within or without. From within, view of the road, sense of direction, responsiveness of the car to control, supply of gas, acceleration, power, speed, behavior around curves, position in the car, driver, relation of dream self to driver are some of the multiple analogues to self-state, self-possession, self-control, clarity of purpose and knowledge, sense of direction, energy, enthusiasm, responsiveness to changing conditions, and divided aspects of the self. From without, the appearance of the car, condition, age, value, model, its park- ing space, movement in traffic, near-misses, collisions are a few of the analogues to the appearance of the self, value of the self, status, conform- ity, and conflict.

Therefore, the collective image "car" has many significances. It is not any one central isomorphism, such as that based on perceptual similarity, that accounts for car as a symbol of the self; rather it is the abundance of correspondences to salient aspects of the self-concept that provides this foundation. These correspondances may arise through the correspondance of "amodal" similarities described later in this paper. The suspicion is raised that "car" is not a unitary symbol for the self, but when car appears in a dream, the question must be broached, "In what sense does 'car' indicate the self?"


Metanomies and allusions may further "individualize" and specify the sense of a general symbol. In the author's early dreams, when he experienced a self dream of the "without" variety, the car was represented as a VW Bug. In one such dream, "The windows of the VW were opaque and I couldn't see inside. It appeared that the driver got around by peering through a periscope which protruded through the roof." During the same period self dreams of the "within" variety were represented by a large "van." The duality of these dream symbols for the self suggests one determinant for the VW depiction, "V" for van den Daele and "W" for "double you."

Representational Complexity of Multiple Dream Images

As a first approximation to description of dreams, the relation of dream imagery to its reference appears to progress along two dimensions simul- taneously (Table 1). The first dimension, the degree of "literalness" of the dream image, has already been discussed in relation to the single image. This subject will be considered anew after examination of the second dimension of "representational complexity" of multiple dream images.

Ordinarily a dream is compounded of multiple images at a time (syn- chronically) and in time (diachronically). Usually, at least some dream images within a dream are connected to one another in a relationship of immediacy, contingency, correspondence, or succession. Habitual forms of coordination of elements within a dream argue the existence of some underlying schema. Although identified by a variety of names and con- ceived in different ways, schema that organize unconscious processes have long been a major interest to psychoanalysis (Horowitz, 1988; Singer and Salovey, 1991). Among those identified as common to clinical populations include Freud's castration anxiety, the early "law of talion" cited by Homey (1931), and Klein's "good breast" (Klein, 1932).

Just as organized images constitute schema, organized schema constitute structural-thematic gestalts. These larger totalities orchestrate the coordination of schemas and render unity to the dream as a whole. These more general organizers include Freud's oedipal complex, Jung's archetypes, Horney's character structures, and Horowitz's person schemas.

The extent of dream organization, from single images to schema to organized totalities, varies independently from the realism of dream images (Table 1). Dream schema with greatest verisimilitude describe functional relations. These depict some interdependence between experientially based dream images. Scenarios provide more complex portrayals of realis- tic events coordinated into some thematic whole. Metaphors and similes render schema that connect functional relations with "as if" representations. The "as if" elements usually rely on some metonymy or partial de-

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piction of the element portrayed. Parables, fables, and the like engage rela- tively direct metaphors or similes articulated by structural-thematic wholes. Finally, allegories are illustrative of a highly complex level of organization where thematic material is mediated by symbols. The forms and types of levels of dream organization are discussed in greater detail elsewhere (Hunt, 1989; van den Daele, in press).

DREAM SYNTAX AND STRUCTURE

Just as language is governed by rules that determine the grammar and sense of utterances, so dreams are subject to rules that determine the organization and import of dreams. The rules may be applied to either singular images or dream schema. In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud examined "the means of representation" of logical connections and generalization. In this endeavor, he pioneered the investigation of dream syntax, but was exceedingly cautious, if not contradictory, in his theoretical remarks about the representation of logical operations. Freud wrote,

What representation do dreams provide for "if," "because," "just," "as," "although," "either~or," and all other conjunctions . . . dreams have means at their disposal for representing these logical relations between dream-thoughts. For the most part dreams disregard all these conjunctions, and it is only the substantive content of the dream-thoughts that they take over and manipulate. The restora~ tion of the connections which the dream work has destroyed is a task which has to be performed by the interpretative process. (1900, p. 312)

However, Freud avers that, "There are dreams in which the most com- plicated intellectual operations take place, statements are contradicted or confirmed, ridiculed or compared, just as they are in waking thought" (1900, p. 313). What Freud appears to have in mind is thought that sometimes accompanies a dream, yet "What is reproduced . . . is the subject matter of the dream thoughts and not the mutual relations between them." (1900, p. 313). That is, whatever apparent higher-level thought occurs in dreams arises through the operation of the secondary process, and dream thought merely encapsulates the subject matter of this thought. A similar point of view holds for speech in dreams: "All spoken sentences which occur in dreams and are specifically described as such are unmodified or slightly modified reproductions of speeches which are also to be found among the recollections in the material of the dream thoughts" (1900, p. 313).

In these remarks, Freud underscores his general theoretical position of the incommensurability between primary and secondary process. If dreams


are derivative of the primary process, then whatever material dreams contain that appears to display logic, language, or, more generally, reality- based thought must be borrowed from the secondary process. Freud's assertion of this point of view can hardly be based on empirical generalization since the sample size of his dream population was not large. There- fore, his position is based on theoretical considerations that reside outside the solely empirical consideration of dreams.

Contradiction in Dreams

With these provisos, Freud conjectured, "If contradiction occurs in a dream, it is either a contradiction of the dream itself or a contradiction derived from the subject matter of one of the dream-thoughts. A contradiction in a dream can only correspond in an exceedingly indirect manner to a contradiction between dream-thoughts" (1900, p. 313). These assertions do not appear quite consistent with Freud's observation later in the text that, "'Just the reverse' reveals its presence in the material through the fact that some piece of the dream-content, which has already been constructed and h a p p e n s . . , to be adjacent to it i s . . . turned around the other way" (1900, p. 326).

Freud's view on contradiction in dreams is entirely compatible with his distinction of primary and secondary process. Indeed it is at the heart of his view that a dream image may stand for itself or its opposite. Again, this view can hardly be empirically derived, but reflects the model of the mind already embraced by Freud.

Examination of dreams by direct interpretation argues that contradiction and negation within dreams is common. The representation of negation by loss, injury, castration, destruction, truncation, separation, and certain forms of transformation possesses a particularly broad scope and may apply to single elements, schemas, or even structural thematic wholes. Other methods of representation of negation include absurdity, inconsistency, in- appropriateness, poor fit, and the like. The latter methods may represent not only simple negation, but nuances of truth functional assertion, for example, degrees of certainty or probability.

Representation of Other Logical Operations

Freud is more sanguine about logical operations that represent an affir- mative relation: Dreams "reproduce logical connection by simultaneity in time . . . . Whenever they show us two elements close together, this guaran- tees that there is some specially intimate connection between what correspond to them among dream thoughts" (1900, p. 314). A particularly strong

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case for a causal relation may be made "if the transformation actually occurs before our eyes and not if we merely notice that one thing has appeared in the place of another" (1900, p. 316). In the case of negation as argued above, a transformation would entail logical contradiction or dis- parity.

The division of a dream into two parts may correspond to logical impli- cation: "The commoner method of representation would be the dependent clause as the introductory dream and to add the principal clause as the main dream" (1900, p. 315). However, the relation of clauses may be reversed: "Quite a common technique of dream-distortion consists in representing the outcome of an event or the conclusion of a train of thought at the beginning of a dream and of placing at its end the premises on which the conclusion was based or the causes which led to the event" (1900, p. 328).

Although Freud argues "The alternative 'either-or' cannot be expressed in dreams in any way whatever" (1900, p. 316), he appears to mean the "exclusive or" that equates to "not both" and not the "inclusive or" that equates to "one or both." The use of "inclusive or" seems strongly implied in Freud's belief that when a dream is divided into two parts, "It often seems as though the same material were represented in the two dreams from different points of view" (1900, p. 316). In a similar vein is Freud's observation, "An 'either-or' is mostly used to describe a dream-element that has the quality of vagueness--which, however, is capable of being resolved [into two or more images]" (1900, p. 317).

Direct interpretation employs the conventions described by Freud that apply to logical relations. Since the method permits negation, the method permits a greater range and precision of logical expression. The "inclusive or" is permitted, along with ideas of necessity and sufficiency that entail logical negation as well as affirmation. However, the particular significance given to relations between dream images depends on the develop- mental level of the dream as a whole (van den Daele, in press).

Conventions That Apply to Single Elements

Just as ordinary syntax governs the relations between language elements, it also organizes grammatical agreement of parts of speech. Dream syntax provides an analogous task for the constituent images of a dream. Among those employed by direct interpretation are conventions that apply to conservation of reference, observer status, and whether a dream image or schema is intended in a particular or in a general sense.

The plurality of dreams appears to follow a rule of conservation of reference, where the same image in a dream identifies the same reference. If an


image is modified, but otherwise the same, the modification applies as a modifier would to a part of speech. Conservation of reference generally applies between dreams as well as within dreams. Typically, the same image in different dreams has the same reference.

Observer status identifies the point of view of the dreamer that varies from the "hidden observer" status identified by Hilgard (1977) to conscious identification with a dream actor. When awareness is identified with a dream actor, the actor may take the perspective of the adult self or the self at an earlier stage. As Freud noted, "The appearance in dreams of things of great size in great quantities and amounts, and of exaggeration, generally, may be another childish characteristic" (1900, p. 268). In direct interpretation, when the self is identified with an actor of child status, the images in the dream world are commensurate with the child's perspective, that is, the self is shorter and objects and other individuals take on an appropriate relation to the child's point of view; the serf's emotions may be exagger- ated and contingent on what for an adult would be atypical antecedents and thought may be preoperationa[. Similar, but more subtile, modifica- tions of the self's perspective may occur when the self's status is that of a concrete operational child or adolescent. In other words, the method takes account of the total set of attributes that characterizes the self's experience in the determination of the self's status.

As discussed earlier, direct interpretation asserts that an image is self- reflexive, that is, it is itself, and knowledge about it arises by association to the image itself. Consequently a particular person is a particular person, but a "general person," which is frequent in dreams, for example, "a person was there . . . ," means "a person in general or anybody." If a person in the dream is identified only as a young man, then this means "a person who is a member of the class of young men." The attributes of this class are derived through image-based association, and individual members of this class through contingent association.

Direct interpretation identifies the reliable conventions by which dream inference and generalization are expressed. In this matter, the method seems to obtain similar results to Freud's representation by "condensation." Freud writes, "Each of the elements of the dream's content turns out to have been 'over-determined'--to have been represented in the dream thoughts many times over" (1900, p. 283). However, Freud's approach to representation is always "bottom-up" in the sense that underlying dream thoughts determine the content of the dream image subject to censorship and constraints on representability. In contrast, direct interpretation permits "top-down" subordination of contingent associations. The dream image is the carrier and organizer of dream signification. The image, itself, is significant, and its status is not derivative. The image contains its referents

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revealed through image-based association. In direct interpretation, no sharp antinomy exists between direct depiction of a particular and a symbol. In Freud's approach, as argued earlier, interpretation by association and interpretation by symbol suggest two different paradigms of unconscious process.

NONELEMENTAL DETERMINANTS

A number of attributes of dreams fundamental to dream significance do not inhere in any single dream element or in the logical relation of elements. Some of these nonelemental attributes are familiar in speech and poetry as prosody, meter, and emphasis, which describe the pattern of speech and language in time. Different patterns convey different meanings with distinct affective and emotional nuances.

A still richer source of analogues to nonelemental dream attributes occurs in musical description and notation. 2 Musical description and notation describe nonelemental musical attributes at a time, synchroncially, as well as in time, diachronically. In contrast, the description of speech patterns occurs largely diachronically; and, when compared to musical description, its vocabulary is impoverished. Dream attributes that possess parallels to synchronic features of musical description include tone, scale, texture, mood, fullness, clarity, and intensity among others; and to diachronic features, they include time, rhythm, meter, diminuendo, and crescendo, among others. Music provides a kind of content-free theater for exploration of the vagaries of nonelemental expression (van den Daele, 1967).

In the dream literature, primary attention has been directed to nonelemental synchronic features, perhaps because such features are most readily identified. In particular, the psychological significance of the vividness or intensity of dream images has been emphasized by Freud and Jung. In Freud's view, "The sensory intensity.., of particular dream images would be related to the psychical intensity of the elements in the dream-thoughts corresponding to them" (1900, p. 330). In Jung's theory (1956), a characteristic of "big" dreams or archetypal dreams is a heightened vividness of the dream as a whole.

The orchestration of dream images within a dream possesses both synchronic and diachronic characteristics. The synchronic features of orchestration include the dream setting and the clarity and static relation of images within a dream. The dream setting may be light or dark (mood), and images may be vague or clear (clarisimo), abstract or lifelike, schematic or richly textured, monochromatic or in color, and singular or multiple, among others. The diachronic features of orchestration include the pace and rhythm, integration, and coordination of dream images in real time.


The dream pace may be slow or quick; dream rhythm may be irregular or measured; the coordination of dream images may be harmonious or cacophonous; and the integration of dream images may proceed according to a particular theme and melodic line or may reflect movements with shifts in tempo, mood, theme, and melody within a dream.

Direct interpretation of synchronic and diachronic features of dream orchestration rests on the individual's fundamental capacity for amodal, perception, physiognomic perception, and the experience of vitality affects. In the Interpersonal World of the Infant, Daniel Stern (1985) advances the argument that amodal perception is an early, basic ability by which the infant organizes his cognitive and interpersonal worlds. Amodal perception permits the individual to translate information received from one sensory modality into another modality by reference to amodal representation "of shapes, intensities, and temporal patterns--the more 'global' qualities of experience" (Stern, 1985, p. 51). In Stern's lexicon, amoda[ perception is complemented by physiognomic perception and vitality affects. Physiog- nomic perception, originally described by Hienz Werner, is the amodal experience of categorical affects such as sadness or anger. For example, in music analogue, sadness is characteristically represented through "slow tempo with diminuendo" and anger through "cacophonous strident and plosive" sound (van den Daele, 1967). Vitality affects describe the more subtile union of the quantitative features of amodal perception with the categorical qualities of physiognomic perception. These forms of feeling are "inextricably involved with all the vital processes of life, such as breathing, getting hungry, eliminating, falling asleep and emerging out of sleep" (Stern, 1985, p. 54).

In the Interpersonal World of the Infant, Stern's focus is primarily on the organization of the infant's cognition, expectations, and behavior. His clinical discussions of case histories of adult patients emphasize the reality foundations of symptoms in infant experience. Early reality outweighs early fantasy in the determination of maladaptation. In his case histories, Stern attends to the patient's history, interpersonal interactions, and conscious preoccupations for clues to early reality determinants. Dreams are not pre- cluded by Stern's theory, but are not given consideration, perhaps due to association with unconscious "fantasy" determinants. The application of direct interpretation suggests that the qualities and nuances of early interpersonal experience may be communicated through dreams with little distortion by fantasy. A case illustration of a dream that portrays the amodal characteristics of early maternal-infant interaction is provided by van den Daele (1986, pp. 216-217).

For direct interpretation, amodal, physiognomic, and vitality affects play the preeminent role in the determination of nonelemental features of

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dream organization. Indeed, amodal perception may be viewed as the central mechanism of dream determination with content appropriated to amodal structure. Image-based association provides a direct approach to these organizing affects. In contrast, ordinary verbal-linguistic cognition of these patterns without reference to image-based or transference experience actually may curtail patient comprehension. At the least, investigation of the nonelemental features of dreams provides a strong support to the con- tinued role of amodal perception in cognition and adaption.

CONTEXT-DEPENDENT INTERPRETATION

Dream interpretation is context-dependent. The significance of an image is a function of its position in the dream scenario. The whole determines the significance of the parts. This tenet of direct interpretation resides alongside the axioms about direct representation as central to technical rules of direct interpretation.

The major thrust of Freud's theory minimizes the "deep" significance of position as a determinant of dream meaning. He wrote, "What we must take as the object of our attention is not the dream as a whole but the separate portions of its content" (t900, p. 103). In concert with this assertion, Freud tended to view the order that occurs in dreams as largely derivative of secondary revision: "For purposes of our interpretation it remains an essential rule invariably to leave out of account the ostensible continu- ity of a dream as being of suspect origin, and to follow the same path back to material of the dream-thoughts no matter whether the dream itself is clear or confused" (1900, p. 500).

Freud's position on this matter follows from the same point of view that determined his stance on negation in dream imagery. In pure form, the primary process was assumed to transmute certain affectively laden "thoughts" directly into imagery with little or no regard for reality, except for the operation of censorship. Therefore, whatever connections are pres- ent in a dream that render it functionally cohesive may be viewed as derivative of secondary process and, consequently, suspect.

Yet, just as Freud was not entirely consistent on the matter of logical operations in dreams, he appeared not entirely consistent in his working rules about the role of contextual determinants on dream meaning. Con- sider, for example, Freud's interpretation of this dream detail:

In the middle of the stalls there was a high tower, which had a platform on top of it surrounded by an iron railing. High up at the top was the conductor, who had the features of Hans Richter. He kept running round the railing, and was perspir-


ing violently; and from that position he was conducting the orchestra, which was grouped about the base of the tower. (1900, p. 342)

Freud comments:

f knew she had a great deal of sympathy for a musician whose career had been prematurely cut short by insanity. So I decided to take the tower in the stalls metaphorically (italics added). It then emerged that the man whom she had wanted to see in Hans Richter's place towered high above the other members of the orchestra. The lower part of the structure represented the man's greatness; the railing at the top, behind which he was running round like a prisoner or an animal in a cage--this was an allusion to the unhappy man's name [Hugo Wolf] (1900, pp. 342-343).

Clearly this interpretation permits contextual determination of dream meaning. It adopts a very different convention than a strictly reductive approach to dream interpretation, where the tower, for example, might sim- ply be understood as a phallus.

RIGHT INTERPRETATION

If a dream is a meaningful whole, then every element of a dream con- tributes to the dream comprehension. No element is superfluous or irrelevant. Direct interpretation requires that every element of a dream must be accounted for and coordinated to the whole.

Direct interpretation assumes every element of a dream is coordinated to the dream as a whole to yield one correct interpretation. The axiom of one correct interpretation respects the organized coherence of dream activity and serves as a powerful heuristic. It requires the interpreter to seek the significance of every element and ensures the interpreter demonstrate the consistency and completeness of his dream interpretation within the frame- work provided by the dream. The axiom provides a foundation for compar- ison and evaluation of alternative inte(pretations.

The method assumes that when ambiguities occur, these ambiguities were intended in the dream; that is, the ambiguity is the message. Freud recognized this in his rules about syntax. A dream may admit to two interpretations as the one correct interpretation if that is intended by the dream. In contrast, two interpretations offered as alternatives by the interpreter do not possess the same status. All th ngs being equal, one interpretation is better, one is worse. The better one isthe one that accounts for the larger number of dream elements and the r~lations among elements. The best one accounts for all the elements and their relations.

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CONCLUSION: THE ORGANIZATION AND ROLE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

In this paper, some of the major technical rules and principles of direct interpretation have been described and discussed. I use the caveat "some" because direct interpretation provides an attitude toward dreams that en- courages additions and revisions to the technical rules and principles as new knowledge is obtained. This applies particularly to the observations contained in this paper about dream schemas, structural-thematic organizers, syntactic rules, and nonelemental determinants of dream signification.

Direct interpretation contrasts with Freud's technical approach by subordination of association to symbolic, syntactic, nonelemental, and contextual determinants of dream meaning. Although Freud was first to describe and discuss these determinants, his theory of primary process and dream genesis undermined the utility of these discoveries. Since Freud believed that primary process operated without regard to logic, and anything could mean itself or its contrary, the significance of syntactic relations among elements was suspect; since he believed that dream determinants were largely infantile and driven by impulse aimed at immediate discharge, symbolism was narrowed and largely reflected sexual and aggressive drives patterned in early life; since he understood that the primary process was under the tutelage of censorship and distortion with its mechanism of dis- placement, the whole range of nonelemental determinants of dream prosody, pace, orchestration, and relation of voices was suspect. What Freud gave with the left hand, he removed with the right. The result has been the survival of a stereotypic reductive approach to dream interpretation, with interest in the unconscious, which was the special discovery and province of psychoanalysis, long ago passed to ego psychology.

The technical rules and principles of direct interpretation assume a different view of the unconscious than that propounded by Freud. The method suggests that the operation of the unconscious varies from expression of the instinctually determined banal wish to the disinterested, objec- tive, cognitively sophisticated assessment of social and human issues. The foundation for a revised theory of the unconscious and the types and levels of organization of dreams as revealed by direct interpretation is outlined elsewhere (van den Daele, in press).

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to students in my graduate dream seminar, particularly Jean Thomson, Kevin McCamant, Jim Fleming, and Peter Graham for their careful review of interpretive decision rules in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.


NOTES

1. Psychoanalysts who wish to participate in a double-blind study of dream interpretation may contact the author.

2. In his pioneering work, Language and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis, Marshall Edelson assimilates elements of poetry to forms of analysis associated with musical description (1975). Edelson's approach suggests the interdependence of all elements of poetic expression, just as the method of direct interpretation suggests for dreams.

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Direct interpretation of dreams: Some basic principles and technical rules

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