morbid extrospection.
Such considerations seem to indicate that it is not true that every
dream, every mental image, is 'worth while,' though at the same time they
by no means diminish the validity of special and purposive methods of
investigating dream consciousness. Freud and those who are following him
have shown, by the expenditure of much patience and skill, that his method
of dream-interpretation may in many cases yield coherent results which it
is not easy to account for by chance. It is quite possible, however, to
recognise Freud's service in vindicating the large place of symbolism in
dreams, and to welcome the application of his psycho-analytic method to
dreams, while yet denying that this is the only method of interpreting
dreams. Freud argues that all dreaming is purposive and significant,
and that we must put aside the belief that dreams are the mere trivial
outcome of the dissociated activity of brain centres. It remains true,
however, that, while reason plays a larger part in dreams than most
people realise, the activity of dissociated brain centres furnishes one
of the best keys to the explanation of psychic phenomena during sleep.
It would be difficult to believe in any case that in the relaxation of
sleep our thoughts are still pursuing a deliberately purposeful direction
under the control of our waking impulses. Many facts indicate--though
Freud's school may certainly claim that such facts have not been
thoroughly interpreted--that, as a matter of fact, this control is often
conspicuously lacking. There is, for instance, the well-known fact that
our most recent and acute emotional experiences--precisely those which
might most ardently formulate themselves in a wish--are rarely mirrored
in our dreams, though recent occurrences of more trivial nature, as well
as older events of more serious import, easily find place there. That
is easily accounted for by the supposition--not quite in a line with a
generalised wish-theory--that the exhausted emotions of the day find rest
at night.
It must also be said that even when we admit that a strong emotion may
symbolically construct an elaborate dream edifice which needs analysis to
be interpreted, we narrow the process unduly if we assert that the emotion
is necessarily a wish. Desire is certainly very fundamental in life and
very primitive. But there is another equally fundamental and primitive
emotion--fear.[158] We may very well expect to find this emotion, as well
as desire, subjacent to dream phenomena.[159]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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