1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

7.3 The Theory of Dreams 189
classification of dreams that is still reminiscent of Herophilus’, but now
inserted in the context of divination. 41
Thus the scientific psychology elements present in Artemidorus’ work
seem to stem from an old and distinguished tradition. But it was the part
that makes modern scientists smirk — the use of the theory for divination
— that allowed the work to survive down to our days, preserved by
the same ancestors of ours who decreed the annihilation of all works by
Herophilus. 42
At this point you might be thinking that Freud’s precursor in Antiquity
happened to be not so much Artemidorus but Herophilus and his school.
But there is more to it. In his Interpretation of dreams, Freud writes:
I am far from wishing to assert that no previous writer has ever
thought of tracing a dream to a wish. . . . Those who put store by such
hints will find that even in antiquity the physician Herophilos, who
lived under the First Ptolemy, distinguished between three kinds of
dreams. . . 43
Freud then continues with the trichotomy found in the already quoted
pseudo-Galenic passage. Earlier in the same book he writes:
The unscientific world, therefore, has always endeavoured to interpret
dreams, and by applying one or the other of two essentially different
methods. The first . . . is symbolic dream-interpretation. . . . The page 240
second . . . might be described as the cipher method. . . . An interesting
variant of this cipher procedure . . . is presented in the work on
dream-interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis.
The worthlessness of both these popular methods of interpretation
does not admit of discussion. . . . So that one might be tempted to
grant the contention of the philosophers and psychiatrists, and to
dismiss the problem of dream-interpretation as altogether fanciful.
I have, however, come to think differently. I have been forced to perceive
that here, once more, we have one of those not infrequent cases
where an ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to
have come nearer to the truth of the matter than the opinion of modern
science. 44
41 Cicero, De divinatione, I, lxiv; see also [von Staden: H], p. 308.
42 The same fate befell other works subsequent to Artemidorus and probably more “scientific”
than his. For instance, the mathematician Pappus is known to have written an
(Suda, under Pappus).
43 Sigmund Freud, The interpretation of dreams, adapted from the translation by A. A. Brill, 1913.
The original is Die Traumdeutung, third edition, 1911 (and subsequent editions). The passage is in a
footnote at the end of Chapter 3 (“The dream as wish-fulfilment”).
44 Ibid., Chapter 2 (at 4% and 18%), Brill translation.
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/10/11 23:59:33