CHAPTER VI
The Dream
After this digression we will return to the question of the
unconscious phantasies which occupied us before. As we have
seen, nobody can dispute their existence, just as nobody can
assert their existence and their qualities forthwith. The question,
however, is just this: Can effects be observed in the consciousness
of unconscious origin, which can be described in conscious
symbolic signs or expressions? Can there be found, in the
conscious, effects which correspond with this expectation? The
psychoanalytic school believes it has discovered such effects. Let
me mention at once the principal phenomenon, the dream. Of
this it may be said that it appears in the conscionsness as a complex
factor unconsciously constructed out of its elements. The
origin of the images in certain reminiscences of the earlier or of
the later past can be proved through the associations belonging to
the single images of the dream. We ask: "Where did you see
this?" or "Where did you hear that?" And through the usual
way of association come the reminiscences that certain parts of
the dream have been consciously experienced, some the day
before, some on former occasions. So far there will be general
agreement, for these things are well known. In so far, the dream
represents in general an incomprehensible composition of certain
elements not at first conscious, which are only recognized later
on by their associations. It is not that all parts of the dream are
recognizable, whence its conscious character could be deduced;
on the contrary, they are often, and indeed mostly, unrecognizable
at first. Only subsequently does it occur to us that we have
experienced in consciousness this or that part of the dream.
From this standpoint alone, we might regard the dream as an
effect of unconscious origin.
The Method of Dream Analysis
The technique for the exploration of the unconscious origin is the one I mentioned before, used before Freud by every scientific
