INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
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CHAPTER ONE
The Scientific Literature of Dream-Problems (up to 1900)
In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological
technique which
makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this
technique, every
dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and
one which
may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking
state. Further, I
shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and
obscurity
of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces
whose
conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams. This done, my
investigation will
terminate, as it will have reached the point where the problem of the dream
merges into
more comprehensive problems, and to solve these, we must have recourse to
material of a
different kind.
I shall begin by giving a short account of the views of earlier writers on this
subject and
of the status of the dream-problem in contemporary science; since in the course
of this
treatise, I shall not often have occasion to refer to either. In spite of
thousands of years of
endeavour, little progress has been made in the scientific understanding of
dreams. This
fact has been so universally acknowledged by previous writers on the subject
that it
seems hardly necessary to quote individual opinions. The reader will find, in
many
stimulating observations, and plenty of interesting material relating to our
subject, but
little or nothing that concerns the true nature of the dream, or that solves
definitely any of
its enigmas. The educated layman, of course, knows even less of the matter.
The conception of the dream that was held in prehistoric ages by primitive
peoples, and
the influence which it may have exerted on the formation of their conceptions of
the
universe, and of the soul, is a theme of such great interest that it is only
with reluctance
that I refrain from dealing with it in these pages. I will refer the reader to
the well-known
works of Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Herbert Spencer, E. B. Tylor and other
writers; I will only add that we shall not realise the importance of these
problems and
speculations until we have completed the task of dream interpretation that lies
before us.
A reminiscence of the concept of the dream that was held in primitive times
seems to
underlie the evaluation of the dream which was current among the peoples of
classical
antiquity.1 They took it for granted that dreams were related to the world of
the
supernatural beings in whom they believed, and that they brought inspirations
from the
gods and demons. Moreover, it appeared to them that dreams must serve a special
purpose in respect of the dreamer; that, as a rule, they predicted the future.
The
extraordinary variations in the content of dreams, and in the impressions which
they
produced on the dreamer, made it, of course, very difficult to formulate a
coherent
conception of them, and necessitated manifold differentiations and
group-formations,
according to their value and reliability. The valuation of dreams by the
individual
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philosophers of antiquity naturally depended on the importance which they were
prepared
to attribute to manticism in general.
In the two works of Aristotle in which there is mention of dreams, they are
already
regarded as constituting a problem of psychology. We are told that the dream is
not godsent,
that it is not of divine but of daimonic origin. For nature is really daimonic,
not
divine; that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is
subject to the laws
of the human spirit, which has, of course, a kinship with the divine. The dream
is defined
as the psychic activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep. Aristotle was
acquainted
with some of the characteristics of the dream-life; for example, he knew that a
dream
converts the slight sensations perceived in sleep into intense sensations (`one
imagines
that one is walking through fire, and feels hot, if this or that part of the
body becomes
only quite slightly warm'), which led him to conclude that dreams might easily
betray to
the physician the first indications of an incipient physical change which
escaped
observation during the day.2
As has been said, those writers of antiquity who preceded Aristotle did not
regard the
dream as a product of the dreaming psyche, but as an inspiration of divine
origin, and in
ancient times, the two opposing tendencies which we shall find throughout the
ages in
respect of the evaluation of the dream-life, were already perceptible. The
ancients
distinguished between the true and valuable dreams which were sent to the
dreamer as
warnings, or to foretell future events, and the vain, fraudulent and empty
dreams, whose
object was to misguide him or lead him to destruction.
The pre-scientific conception of the dream which obtained among the ancients
was, of
course, in perfect keeping with their general conception of the universe, which
was
accustomed to project as an external reality that which possessed reality only
in the life of
the psyche. Further, it accounted for the main impression made upon the waking
life by
the morning memory of the dream; for in this memory the dream, as compared with
the
rest of the psychic content, seems to be something alien, coming, as it were,
from another
world. It would be an error to suppose that the theory of the supernatural
origin of dreams
lacks followers even in our own times; for quite apart from pietistic and
mystical writers -
- who cling, as they are perfectly justified in doing, to the remnants of the
once
predominant realm of the supernatural until these remnants have been swept away
by
scientific explanation -- we not infrequently find that quite intelligent
persons, who in
other respects are averse to anything of a romantic nature, go so far as to base
their
religious belief in the existence and co-operation of superhuman spiritual
powers on the
inexplicable nature of the phenomena of dreams (Haffner). The validity ascribed
to the
dream life by certain schools of philosophy -- for example, by the school of
Schelling --
is a distinct reminiscence of the undisputed belief in the divinity of dreams
which
prevailed in antiquity; and for some thinkers, the mantic or prophetic power of
dreams is
still a subject of debate. This is due to the fact that the explanations
attempted by
psychology are too inadequate to cope with the accumulated material, however
strongly
the scientific thinker may feel that such superstitious doctrines should be
repudiated.
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To write a history of our scientific knowledge of the dream problem is extremely
difficult, because, valuable though this knowledge may be in certain respects,
no real
progress in a definite direction is as yet discernible. No real foundation of
verified results
has hitherto been established on which future investigators might continue to
build. Every
new author approaches the same problems afresh, and from the very beginning. If
I were
to enumerate such authors in chronological order, giving a survey of the
opinions which
each has held concerning the problems of the dream, I should be quite unable to
draw a
clear and complete picture of the present state of our knowledge on the subject.
I have
therefore preferred to base my method of treatment on themes rather than on
authors, and
in attempting the solution of each problem of the dream, I shall cite the
material found in
the literature of the subject.
But as I have not succeeded in mastering the whole of this literature -- for it
is widely
dispersed and interwoven with the literature of other subjects -- I must ask my
readers to
rest content with my survey as it stands, provided that no fundamental fact or
important
point of view has been overlooked.
In a supplement to a later German edition, the author adds:
I shall have to justify myself for not extending my summary of the literature of
dream
problems to cover the period between first appearance of this book and the
publication of
the second edition. This justification may not seem very satisfactory to the
reader; none
the less, to me it was decisive. The motives which induced me to summarise the
treatment of dreams in the literature of the subject have been exhausted by the
foregoing
introduction; to have continued this would have cost me a great deal of effort
and would
not have been particularly useful or instructive. For the interval in question
-- a period of
nine years -- has yielded nothing new or valuable as regards the conception of
dreams,
either in actual material or in novel points of view. In most of the literature
which has
appeared since the publication of my own work, the latter has not been mentioned
or
discussed; it has, of course, received the least attention from the so-called
`research
workers on dreams', who have thus afforded a brilliant example of the aversion
to
learning anything new so characteristic of the scientist. `Les savants ne sont
pas curieux',
said the scoffer, Anatole France. If there were such a thing in science as the
right of
revenge, I, in my turn, should be justified in ignoring the literature which has
appeared
since the publication of this book. The few reviews which have appeared in the
scientific
journals are so full of misconceptions and lack of comprehension that my only
possible
answer to my critics would be a request that they should read this book over
again -- or
perhaps merely that they should read it!
And in a supplement to the fourth German edition which appeared in 1914, a year
after I
published the first English translation of this work, he writes:
Since then, the state of affairs has certainly undergone a change; my
contribution to the
`interpretation of dreams' is no longer ignored in the literature of the
subject. But the new
situation makes it even more impossible to continue the foregoing summary. The
Interpretation of Dreams has evoked a whole series of new contentions and
problems,
INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
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