Dreaming and Experiencing in the Potential Space

The author presents some clinical sequences from two sessions in order to illustrate his thoughts about dreaming, about experiencing in analysis, and about the clinical realization of the potential space. When the dreamer’s conscious and unconscious relationship with her own dream turns the latter into a living psychic object, the experience that the dreamer can have of the dream occupies an intermediate area, placing itself between the internal world and external reality. When the dreamer lets the dream-experience affect the experience of external reality, a further transformation can take place in the analysis, since this intermediate intrapsychic area can become a transitional area between the patient and the analyst. The analyst and the patient were able to create a potential space in which, in addition to the transference repetition of cumulatively traumatic situations, an experience was generated that gave rise to embryonic processes of integration between dissociated aspects of the patient.