The reader may justly inquire why the analyst should resort to dream
analysis instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all
cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way.
This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be
sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we
have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of
being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and
success in the analysis, one may resort to dream analysis, not so much for
the purpose of following the royal road to what the Freudian school calls
"the unconscious," but rather with the object of obtaining the confidence of
the patient and of having something definite to start with.
AN ACT OF EVERYDAY LIFE TREATED AS A PRETENDED DREAM AND INTERPRETED BY
PSYCHOANALYSIS
BY RAYMOND BELLAMY
Professor of Education, Emory and Henry College, Emory, Va.
A RECENT article by Brill, entitled "Artificial Dreams and Lying,"[1]
recalled to me a little work I did two years ago while engaged in making an
introductory study of dreams as a thesis at Clark University. The part
which is hereby submitted is a fragment of a larger work and, being only a
sort of side issue, was never included in the thesis proper. I have made
only such changes as were made necessary by the fact that this is a fragment
and needed one or two minor changes to make it complete.
[1] Journal Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 5.
Let me say at the beginning that I have the greatest and most profound
respect for Freudian theories as interpreted by G. Stanley Hall and other
men of like scholarly ability, but I have never been able to accept the more
extreme form of Freudianism as interpreted by some of the most prolific
writers in this field. I have found that the charges made by Habermann[2]
are substantially true. I find it very helpful indeed, to try to interpret
my own dreams and to assist some of my students to do so according to the
Freudian formula, and to a certain point I believe these interpretations are
undoubtedly true. The question is to find the point beyond which the
interpretation becomes artificial. Personally, I believe that this will
always have to be decided finally by the individual himself rather than by
some outsider who insists on reading in a certain interpretation. I have
come to believe that it is possible for one to become trained to the point
at which he is able to decide just how far the interpretation goes, or, at
least, to approximate it.
[2] Journal Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 4.
With these few introductory remarks I shall submit the paper, which was
written in 1912. I have not appended the rather long and cumbersome
bibliography from which I drew these references, but I can supply any
reference that is wanted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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