Dream Life: A Re-examination of the Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique

"Dreams are my landscape", said Meltzer. In this book he re-establishes psychoanalysis as the art of reading dreams, and dream-life as the core of mental processes. Dreams are not just puzzles to be decoded, the effluence of past trauma or future wish-fulfilment; they are the psyche's attempt—with a varying level of aesthetic achievement—to symbolize its present emotional conflicts in order to re-orient itself toward "the real world—meaning external and internal reality".