DREAM SCREEN

dream screen: translation

   Also known as matrix of the mind and background object of primary identification. The term dream screen was introduced in or shortly before 1946 by the American psychoanalyst Bertram David Lewin (1896-1971) to denote the hypothetical background upon which a * dream appears to be projected. As Lewin explains, "The dream screen, as I define it, is the surface on which a dream appears to be projected. It is the blank background, present in the dream though not necessarily seen, and the visually perceived action of ordinary manifest dream contents takes place on it or before it. Theoretically it may be part of the latent or the manifest content, but this distinction is academic. The dream screen is not often noted or mentioned by the analytic patient, and in the practical business of dream interpretation, the analyst is not concerned with it." Phenomeno-logically, the dream screen may be related to the virtual 'screen' upon which "visual hallucinations sometimes appear to be 'projected'. In the literature this phenomenon has been reported in various types of visual hallucination, notably those occurring in the context of substance abuse.

   References

   Lewin, B.D. (1946). Sleep, the mouth, and the dream screen. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 15, 419-434.

   Ogden, T.H. (1989). The primitive edge of experience. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. Siegel, R.K. (1978). Cocaine hallucinations. American Journal of Psychiatry, 135, 309-314.