It needs no repetition or elaboration to convince psychoanalysts (I use the term "psychoanalyst" in the broad, unrestricted sense of the word, including the supporters of all possible schools or standpoints or methods in psychoanalysis or mental analysis, and not limiting it to Freud's psychoanalysis) of the essential and fundamental truth of this statement. I shall, therefore, not unnecessarily lengthen this paper by endeavoring to bring forth complete evidence of the truth of this assertion. As a matter of fact, this conclusion or generalization applies not alone to dreams but to any single element in the objective or subjective world which may be seized upon as the initial stimulus and from which, as a starting-point, association of ideas, in ordinary conversation or aided by any of the more or less experimental or artificial but valuable methods heretofore mentioned, may be begun and continued ad libitum or even ad infinitum, under the tactful guidance and judgment of the investigator. For example, if I may be permitted to tread upon the dangerous path of near-sensationalism or extremism, I may mention that were I to take even so common, so widely used, and so relatively insignificant a word as the definite article "the" as the initial stimulus, and have one of my fellowmen or fellow-women (whose full co-operation, it is assumed, I have previously obtained) give me one or more free or random word associations, and thereafter, with these newly acquired elements, continued to forge my way into the thickly wooded and unexplored recesses of the unknown and mysterious forest of the mind, I doubt not but that I should achieve the same results as if I had started upon my journey with a dream. If this be true, and I firmly believe that it is, in the case of that universally used and apparently inconsequential word "the," to which the normal person can be expected to have such a large number of associations, of varying degrees of intimacy or remoteness, how much truer is it when we have such a definite mental fact or mental state as a dream as the starting-point of our hunting expedition? The dream gives us something tangible to start with, something near at home to the dreamer or patient, something interesting and amusing to him, something baffling and so frequently unintelligible to him, and, as a consequence, a more conscientious, earnest and wholehearted co-operation can be obtained from the person whose mental life is being investigated. Here is something vivid to him, something of personal interest to him. And so we can look to him to lend us his aid in better spirit and in fuller measure than might otherwise be obtainable.