The author reflects on a reverie he had with a patient some years ago, applying what he has learned since about reverie and projective identification. Relevant literature demonstrates a wide range of technical approaches regarding the revelation to the patient of the analyst’s reverie. A clinical example of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in which the analyst, feeling deadened by a depressed patient, described his reverie to his patient. The reverie consisted of a vision of a sexually alluring popular music record album cover about which the analyst had not thought for decades. This experience was followed by a change in the therapy which was not predictable based on what had been transpiring between analyst and patient until then. The patient and analyst gradually became livelier in the therapy, and the patient became more active in the world. The meaning of the reverie to analyst and patient, the meaning of disclosing the reverie, and how this affected the therapy, are explored. In conclusion, sometimes it is appropriate to disclose a reverie to one’s patient. One can eschew the dichotomy between self-disclosure and attempted anonymity, and consider a spectrum of possibilities regarding what to disclose, including a reverie, based on the current analyst-patient interaction.
Paul Ian Steinberg is a psychiatrist and clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of British Columbia, where he maintains a practice in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Dr. Steinberg is a graduate of the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies in New York, and also is a candidate of the Vancouver Institute of Psychoanalysis. He has published on psychodynamic aspects of consultation/liaison psychiatry, group psychotherapy, partial hospitalization programs, threats of violence, oral examinations and psychodynamic formulation.