To The Editor NY Science Times

The thrust of Benedict Carey’s article on dreams is that dreams have to do with memory and cognition, not, as Freud proposed, with emotional motivation. However, the findings presented in this article do not address adequately the fuller context of our knowledge about the nature of dreams, or about their meaning and their use in psychoanalysis. Mark Solms, for example, has assembled a very persuasive body of neuroscientific studies supporting the view that dreaming has to do with motivation and desire as well as cognition. Carey cites Allen Hobson without noting that Hobson, along with most of his research colleagues, has abandoned his original theory that dreams are the product of random neural firings. A hundred years of psychoanalytic research and experience show that much can be learned about people’s mental and emotional lives through dream interpretation and other psychoanalytic methods. Time Magazine had it right. Freud is NOT dead.

Arnold D. Richards

To the Editor:
I would like to add to the article Patching Up the Frayed Couch recognition of the contribution to psychoanalytic scholarship made by members on the New York Psychoanalytic Society The editors of two of the most important journals in psychoanalysis the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly were for decades members of NYPSI.

Just as the venerable New York Times has been reinventing it self the article points out for me the need for NYPSI and psychoanalysis to reinvent ourself for a new time.

Arnold Richards

Member NYPSA
Former Editor JAPA

Click here for Link to the New York Times Article: Patching-up the Frayed Couch