already happened to more than one psychoanalyst. It is therefore fallacious to try to prove any particular theory from the dreams arising in the course of analysis. For this purpose the only conclusive dreams are those derived from demonstrably uninfluenced persons. In such cases one would only have to exclude the possibility of telepathic thought-reading. But if you concede this possibility you will have to subject very many things to a rigorous reexamination and, among others, many judicial verdicts.
But although we must do full justice to the force of suggestion, we must not overrate it. The patient is no empty sack into which you may stuff whatever you like; on the contrary, he brings his own predetermined contents which strive obstinately against suggestion and always obtrude themselves afresh. Through analytic "suggestions," only the outward form is determined, never the content—this is always being freshly impressed upon my notice. The form is the unlimited, the ever-changing; but the content is fixed, and only to be assailed slowly and with great difficulty. Were it not so, suggestion therapy would be in every respect the most effective, profitable, and easiest therapy,—a real panacea. That, alas! it is not, as every honourable hypnotist will freely admit.
To return to your question as to how far it is conceivable that patients may deceive the doctor by making use—perhaps involuntarily—of his expressions: this is indeed a very serious problem. The analyst must exercise all possible care and practise unsparing self-criticism if he would avoid, as far as possible, being led into error by patients' dreams. It may be admitted that they almost always use modes of expression in their dreams learnt in analysis—some more, some less. Interpretations of earlier symbols will themselves be used again as fresh symbols in later dreams. It happens not seldom, for instance, that sexual situations which appear in symbolic form in the earlier dreams, will appear "undisguised" in later ones, and here again they are the symbolic expression of ideas of another character capable of further analysis. The not infrequent dream
