Dan was a young, married, childless man who sought treatment from Albert
Biele, M.D., for severe agoraphobia. His wife brought him in unannounced
during an acute anxiety attack. After this initial evaluation, the first treat-
ment session was set for the next day. The patient was encouraged to dream,
to write his dreams down immediately after awaking, and to bring them to
the session. He said this would be impossible, as he had his last dream when
he was 12. The next day, he appeared with the following written report of a
dream:

I was in some kind of building with a wooden floor. My wife and I and another
man were there. The man pointed down to the floor, to a lizard or catfish. We
(man and patient) talked about it. I reached down and picked it up, and it
grabbed hold of me with a hind claw. I shook my hand and it (the animal) fell
off.

In the hope of obtaining additional visuomotor elements that the patient
might have forgotten to write down, Dr. Biele asked some questions about
the pictorial aspects of the dream.

Dr. Biele: What kind of lizard?

Patient: The lizard was a mud puppy, an amphibian-like creature. And I felt
better when I shook it off.

Dr. Biele: What kind of mud puppy?

Patient: It had funny looking gills on the side of its head, not nice arches, al-
most like a tree- or finger-type gills.

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