portion and every element of every portion of the dream, and by means of
each such lesser or greater element of the dream, we could arrive at a mass
of material, a wealth of information concerning the past experiential,
emotional, mental and moral life of the individual whose dream we were at
the moment analyzing. In fact, one could ferret out the full life history in
great detail, thus obtaining a complete autobiography leading far down into
the depths of the dreamer's mental life and into the inner world of his own.
With the material so obtained one could truly reconstruct the complete life
history, piecemeal, until the wonderful and inspiring structure of the
mental world of the dreamer would be reared, reaching far back to early
childhood and perhaps even to infancy, extending so far forward as to give
us a prophecy, based on the dreamer's dynamic trends and emotional trends
and leanings, of the probable future, stretching forth its tentacles in all
directions, and, uncovering the psychic underworld in its every part,
holding up before our eyes the naked mind, in its length, its breadth and
its thickness.
I am not referring here particularly to the employment of the method of
hypnosis, especially as practiced by Prince, or to Freud's so-called free
association (which is frequently really forced association) or Jung's word
association methods. I am speaking only of analysis of the dream by ordinary
conversation and introspection, in the normal waking state. Of course, were
the latter method supplemented by these other methods, the results would be
so much the more complete and far-reaching. I may mention, specifically,
that the employment of Freud's free association method would be helpful here
in gathering information because, when employing this method, one
practically forces the one being analyzed to think by analogy and by
comparison, insisting that he tell you what a certain word or name or scene
or experience or what not reminds him of, what it resembles, what he can
compare it to, no matter how remote its connection, no matter how unrelated,
how far-fetched or how silly the association may appear in his own eyes--in
other words, we demand that he co-operate by suspending critical selection
and judgment. Although, as I say, Freud's, Jung's, Prince's and other
methods may be advantageously employed, still, it seems to me, although I
cannot yet state this in final or positive terms, that, at least in most
cases, such an unravelment and resurrection of the past life history can be
obtained by an analysis of the dream conducted in the ordinary, waking
state, and the usual conversational mode of history-taking and daily oral
intercourse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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