a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

epeatedly dealt with dreams, but always only with the purpose of applying its
physiological theories to the dream. By physicians, of course, the dream was
considered as a non-psychic act, as the manifestation of somatic irritations in
the psychic life. Binz (1876) pronounced the dream "a bodily process, in all
cases useless, in many actually pathological, above which the world-soul and
immortality are raised as high as the blue ether over the weed-grown sands
of the lowest plain." Maury compared it with the irregular twitchings of St.
Vitus' Dance in contrast to the co-ordinated movements of the normal person.
An old comparison makes the content of the dream analogous to the tones
which the "ten fingers of a musically illiterate person would bring forth if they
ran over the keys of the instrument."
Interpretation means finding a hidden meaning. There can be no question of
interpretation in such an estimation of the dream process. Look up the
description of the dream in Wundt, Jodl and other newer philosophers. You
will find an enumeration of the deviations of dream life from waking thought,
in a sense disparaging to the dream. The description points out the
disintegration of association, the suspension of the critical faculty, the
elimination of all knowledge, and other signs of diminished activity. The only
valuable contribution to the knowledge of the dream which we owe to exact
science pertains to the influence of bodily stimuli, operative during sleep, on
the content of the dream. There are two thick volumes of experimental
researches on dreams by the recently deceased Norwegian author, J. Mourly
Vold, (translated into German in 1910 and 1912), which deal almost solely
with the consequences of changes in the position of the limbs. They are
recommended as the prototype of exact dream research. Now can you
imagine what exact science would say if it discovered that we wish to attempt
to find the meaning of dreams? It may be it has already said it, but we will
not allow ourselves to be frightened off. If errors can have a meaning, the
dream can, too, and errors in many cases have a meaning which has escaped
exact science. Let us confess to sharing the prejudice of the ancients and the
common people, and let us follow in the footsteps of the ancient dream
interpreters.
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