Dream Psychology | Page 2

dream
and some detail of the dreamer's life during the previous waking state. This positively
establishes a relation between sleeping states and waking states and disposes of the
widely prevalent view that dreams are purely nonsensical phenomena coming from
nowhere and leading nowhere.
Secondly, Freud, after studying the dreamer's life and modes of thought, after noting
down all his mannerisms and the apparently insignificant details of his conduct which
reveal his secret thoughts, came to the conclusion that there was in every dream the
attempted or successful gratification of some wish, conscious or unconscious.
Thirdly, he proved that many of our dream visions are symbolical, which causes us to
consider them as absurd and unintelligible; the universality of those symbols, however,
makes them very transparent to the trained observer.
Fourthly, Freud showed that sexual desires play an enormous part in our unconscious, a

part which puritanical hypocrisy has always tried to minimize, if not to ignore entirely.
Finally, Freud established a direct connection between dreams and insanity, between the
symbolic visions of our sleep and the symbolic actions of the mentally deranged.
There were, of course, many other observations which Freud made while dissecting the
dreams of his patients, but not all of them present as much interest as the foregoing nor
were they as revolutionary or likely to wield as much influence on modern psychiatry.
Other explorers have struck the path blazed by Freud and leading into man's unconscious.
Jung of Zurich, Adler of Vienna and Kempf of Washington, D.C., have made to the study
of the unconscious, contributions which have brought that study into fields which Freud
himself never dreamt of invading.
One fact which cannot be too emphatically stated, however, is that but for Freud's
wishfulfillment theory of dreams, neither Jung's "energic theory," nor Adler's theory of
"organ inferiority and compensation," nor Kempf's "dynamic mechanism" might have
been formulated.
Freud is the father of modern abnormal psychology and he established the
psychoanalytical point of view. No one who is not well grounded in Freudian lore can
hope to achieve any work of value in the field of psychoanalysis.
On the other hand, let no one repeat the absurd assertion that Freudism is a sort of
religion bounded with dogmas and requiring an act of faith. Freudism as such was merely
a stage in the development of psychoanalysis, a stage out of which all but a few bigoted
camp followers, totally lacking in originality, have evolved. Thousands of stones have
been added to the structure erected by the Viennese physician and many more will be
added in the course of time.
But the new additions to that structure would collapse like a house of cards but for the
original foundations which are as indestructible as Harvey's statement as to the
circulation of the blood.
Regardless of whatever additions or changes have been made to the original structure, the
analytic point of view remains unchanged.
That point of view is not only revolutionising all the methods of diagnosis and treatment
of mental derangements, but compelling the intelligent, up-to-date physician to revise
entirely his attitude to almost every kind of disease.
The insane are no longer absurd and pitiable people, to be herded in asylums till nature
either cures them or relieves them, through death, of their misery. The insane who have
not been made so by actual injury to their brain or nervous system, are the victims of
unconscious forces which cause them to do abnormally things which they might be
helped to do normally.
Insight into one's psychology is replacing victoriously sedatives and rest cures.

Physicians dealing with "purely" physical cases have begun to take into serious
consideration the "mental" factors which have predisposed a patient to certain ailments.
Freud's views have also made a revision of all ethical and social values unavoidable and
have thrown an unexpected flood of light upon literary and artistic accomplishment.
But the Freudian point of view, or more broadly speaking, the psychoanalytic point of
view, shall ever remain a puzzle to those who, from laziness or indifference, refuse to
survey with the great Viennese the field over which he carefully groped his way. We
shall never be convinced until we repeat under his guidance all his laboratory
experiments.
We must follow him through the thickets of the unconscious, through the land which had
never been charted because academic philosophers, following the line of least effort, had
decided a priori that it could not be charted.
Ancient geographers, when exhausting their store of information about distant lands,
yielded to an unscientific craving for romance and, without any evidence to support their
day dreams, filled the blank spaces left on their maps by unexplored tracts with amusing
inserts such as "Here there are lions."
Thanks to Freud's interpretation of dreams the "royal road" into the unconscious