Canaries in the Mind: Reflections on Paul Lippmann and the World of Dreams

Nowhere do we see the beauty of our struggles so clearly as in the world of dreams. This past year saw the passing of one of our most creative and inspiring poets of the world of dreams, Paul Lippmann. In this paper, I speak from and about the world of dreams, recognizing ways in which they call to our attention aspects of experience which, unparsed, leave us caught emotionally. Considered will be the dream itself, its forms and functions, ways in which our emotional tangles within the dream space become visual pictograms. Bion suggested that the purpose of psychoanalysis is to enhance the capacities for feeling, thinking and dreaming. The dreaming process is enhanced by and in the psychoanalytic session. Through the dream work of analyst and analysand, dream elements become more fully elaborated into meaningful symbols that enrich the evolving narratives within the sessions. I will also consider ways in which psychosocial perspectives and psychoanalytic field theory have enhanced our understanding of and ability to make sense of our dreams, providing an enlarged playing field beyond the reconstructive efforts of early psychoanalysis.