which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous. This is symbolic dream interpretation; it naturally goes to pieces at the outset in the case of those dreams which appear not only unintelligible but confused. The construction which the biblical Joseph places upon the dream of Pharaoh furnishes an example of its procedure. The seven fat kine, after which came seven lean ones which devour the former, furnish a symbolic substitute for a prediction of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt, which will consume all the excess which seven fruitful years have created. Most of the artificial dreams contrived by poets are intended for such symbolic interpretation, for they reproduce the thought conceived by the poet in a disguise found to be in accordance with the characteristics of our dreaming, as we know these from experience.[1] The idea that the dream concerns itself chiefly with future events whose course it surmises in advance—a relic of the prophetic significance with which dreams were once credited—now becomes the motive for transplanting the meaning of the dream, found by means of symbolic interpretation, into the future by means of an "it shall."
A demonstration of the way in which such symbolic interpretation is arrived at cannot, of course, be given. Success remains a matter of ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason dream interpretation has naturally been elevated to an art, which seems to depend upon extraordinary gifts.[2] The other of the two popular methods of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be
- ↑ In a novel, Gradiva, of the poet W. Jensen, I accidentally discovered several artificial dreams which were formed with perfect correctness and which could be interpreted as though they had not been invented, but had been dreamt by actual persons. The poet declared, upon my inquiry, that he was unacquainted with my theory of dreams. I have made use of this correspondence between my investigation and the creative work of the poet as a proof of the correctness of my method of dream analysis ("Der Wahn und die Träume," in W. Jensen's Gradiva, No. 1 of the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde, 1906, edited by me). Dr. Alfred Robitsek has since shown that the dream of the hero in Goethe's Egmont may be interpreted as correctly as an actually experienced dream ("Die Analyse von Egmont's Träume," Jahrbuch, edited by Bleuler-Freud, vol. ii., 1910.)
- ↑ After the completion of my manuscript, a paper by Stumpf(63) came to my notice which agrees with my work in attempting to prove that the dream is full of meaning and capable of interpretation. But the interpretation is undertaken by means of an allegorising symbolism, without warrant for the universal applicability of the procedure.
