I.

In what we may term “prescientific days”
people were in no uncertainty about the
interpretation of dreams. When they were
recalled after awakening they were regarded
as either the friendly or hostile manifesta-
tion of some higher powers, demoniacal and
Divine. With the rise of scientific thought
the whole of this expressive mythology was
transferred to psychology; to-day there is
but a small minority among educated per-
sons who doubt that the dream is the
dreamer’s own psychical act.

But since the downfall of the mythologi-
cal hypothesis an interpretation of the
dream has been wanting. The conditions
of its origin; its relationship to our psychical
life when we are awake; its independence of
disturbances which, during the state of
sleep, seem to compel notice; its many pecu-
I

2

liarities repugnant to our waking thought;
the incongruence between its images and
the feelings they engender; then the dream’s
evanescence, the way in which, on awaken-
ing, our thoughts thrust it aside as some-
thing bizarre, and our reminiscences muti-
lating or rejecting it—all these and many
other problems have for many hundred
years demanded answers which up till now
could never have been satisfactory. ¹⁾Before
all there is the question as to the meaning
of the dream, a question which is in itself
double-sided. ²⁾There is, firstly, the psychi-
cal significance of the dream, its position
with regard to the psychical processes, as
to a possible biological function; secondly,
has the dream a meaning—can sense be
made of each single dream as of other
mental syntheses ?

Three tendencies can be observed in the
estimation of dreams. Many philosophers
have given currency to one of these ten-
dencies, one which at the same time pre-
serves something of the dream’s former

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over-valuation. The foundation of dream
life is for them a peculiar state of psychical
activity, which they even celebrate as
elevation to some higher state. Schubert,
for instance, claims: “The dream is the
liberation of the spirit from the pressure of
external nature, a detachment of the soul
from the fetters of matter.” Not all go so
far as this, but many maintain that dreams
have their origin in real spiritual excita-
tions, and are the outward manifestations
of spiritual powers whose free movements
have been hampered during the day
(“Dream Phantasies,” Scherner, Volkelt).
A large number of observers acknowledge
that dream life is capable of extraordinary
achievements—at any rate, in certain fields
(“Memory”).

In striking contradiction with this the
majority of medical writers hardly admit
that the dream is a psychical phenomenon
at all. According to them dreams are pro-
voked and initiated exclusively by stimuli
proceeding from the senses or the body,

4

which either reach the sleeper from without
or are accidental disturbances of his internal
organs. The dream has no greater claim
to meaning and importance than the sound
called forth by the ten fingers of a person
quite unacquainted with music running his
fingers over the keys of an instrument.
The dream is to be regarded, says Binz,
“as a physical process always useless, fre-
quently morbid.” All the peculiarities of
dream life are explicable as the incoherent
effort, due to some physiological stimulus,
of certain organs, or of the cortical elements
of a brain otherwise asleep.

But slightly affected by scientific opinion
and untroubled as to the origin of dreams,
the popular view holds firmly to the belief
that dreams really have got a meaning, in
some way they do foretell the future, whilst
the meaning can be unravelled in some way
or other from its oft bizarre and enigmatical
content. The reading of dreams consists in
replacing the events of the dream, so far as
remembered, by other events. This is done

5

either scene by scene, according to some
rigid key, or the dream as a whole is replaced
by something else of which it was a symbol.
Serious-minded persons laugh at these
efforts—‘‘ Dreams are but sea-foam !’’