1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

190 7. Some Other Aspects of the Scientific Revolution
Freud cited Artemidorus often, and with the highest regard. For example:
Artemidorus of Daldis . . . left us the fullest and most careful work of
the Greco-Roman world on the interpretation of dreams. 45
Thus, to judge from Freud’s authoritative testimony, the modern psychoanalytic
theory of dreams had at its origin the elements “near to the
truth” found in Artemidorus’ work (which Freud must have studied carefully,
if he thought it was the most important on the subject) and based
on the “foreshadowings” of Herophilus, to whom Freud correctly, if unintentionally,
46 attributes the paternity of the theory of wish-incited dreams.
If it has been possible to reconstruct in this way at least part of the thinking
of the Herophilean school, it is no wonder that Musatti finds so many
“curious matches” for Artemidorus in Freud, nor that they use the same
terms, such as “cosmic dreams” and “hypnagogic images”, 47 nor that all
the symbols listed by Artemidorus are generously approved as “correct page 241
and exact” by the modern heirs of his thinking.
There remains to explain why on earth it took “great pains” (to use
Musatti’s words) for scientific psychology in the last century to uncover
the “types of ideas” that Artemidorus showed “familiarity” with. One
might suspect that the effort lay in translating the ideas into a scientific
language conforming to the current canon. But if, in the case of trigonometry,
halving the chord was enough to make the theory unrecognizable
to generations of historians of science, 48 the effort shouldn’t have been so
great after all.
We have talked of dreams only, but in Artemidorus there are interesting
“foreshadowings” of other psychoanalytic elements. For instance, Musatti
writes:
45 Sigmund Freud, ibid., Chapter 2, third footnote. In his Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
he likewise wrote: “Of the literature dealing with dreams we fortunately have the main work, by
Artemidorus of Daldis” (Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, 1915–1917, fifth lecture).
It is not clear whether these statements are based on (a priori) faith in the workings of chance, or
on a belief that Artemidorus could not be surpassed.
46 The facetious tone in which Freud cites Herophilus only for the sake of those who “put store
by such hints” (“Wer auf solche Andeutungen Wert legt”) suggests that he too was subject to the
well-known phenomenon of “Freudian removal”, which makes it seem hilarious that one may
have been foreshadowed by a Hellenistic author.
47 Musatti is tempted to consider these images similar to the concept found in Artemidorus, and
this not only because of the similarity in meaning but also of the word itself: the modern word
“hypnagogic” is a direct borrowing of Artemidorus’ word.
48 See Section 2.8.
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/10/11 23:59:33