Features of dreams in liminal (psychosomatic) functioning

PSYCHOANALYTIC WORK WITH DREAMS

Abstract

Psychosomatic functioning is liminal, transitional and can be placed between borderline and psychotic. This functioning is characterized by a meager onyrical and phantasmatic life. The ability to mentalize, associative thinking is poorly expressed, moreover, according to A. Green they have a central phobic position in the form of avoidance of associativeness. Such avoidance leads to mental mortification, the extreme expression of which is a marginal version of psychosomatic functioning – operativeness, machine-likeness. Dreams of such patients are either absent, or amaze with their scarcity and deserted spaces (the patient himself, people and living creatures are absent in such kinds of dreams). Often, we observe recurring dreams – traumatic, reproducing real traumas of the past. "Raw" dreams are presented as an undisguised realization of drives, without the slightest sign of mental elaboration.