A General Introduction to PsychoanalysisFreud, Sigmund
Science
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
A certain excess in judgment may make us suspicious. The objections to
the dream as an object of research obviously go too far. The question of
insignificance we have already had to deal with in discussing errors. We
said to ourselves that important matters may manifest themselves through
small signs. As concerns the indefiniteness of the dream, it is after
all a characteristic like any other. One cannot prescribe the
characteristics of an object. Moreover, there are clear and definite
dreams. And there are other objects of psychiatric research which suffer
from the same trait of indefiniteness, e.g., many compulsion ideas, with
which even respectable and esteemed psychiatrists have occupied
themselves. I might recall the last case which occurred in my practice.
The patient introduced himself to me with the words, "I have a certain
feeling as though I had harmed or had wished to harm some living
thing--a child?--no, more probably a dog--perhaps pushed it off a
bridge--or something else." We can overcome to some degree the
difficulty of uncertain recollection in the dream if we determine that
exactly what the dreamer tells us is to be taken as his dream, without
regard to anything which he has forgotten or may have changed in
recollection. And finally, one cannot make so general an assertion as
that the dream is an unimportant thing. We know from our own experience
that the mood in which one wakes up after a dream may continue
throughout the whole day. Cases have been observed by physicians in
which a psychosis begins with a dream and holds to a delusion which
originated in it. It is related of historical personages that they drew
their inspiration for important deeds from dreams. So we may ask whence
comes the contempt of scientific circles for the dream?
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