clearly into the dreamer's mental life, indeed it regularly concerns what to him is most personal and vital. These two things, the manifest and the latent contents, it is important that the reader should keep distinct and clearly in mind. The interpretation of dreams, of their manifest content, is a difficult matter, involving a knowledge of the so-called 'dream-work," that is, of the strange processes by which the underlying thought is elaborated into the manifest content by the mind during sleep. 66 The relation thus indicated between the apparent and the underlying thought of dreams will perhaps seem less novel to those accustomed to analyze and interpret works of literature and the other arts. Behind every work of creative imagination - poem, painting, or piece of architecture — is the latent idea or motive impulse which inspires and explains it. The Prisoner of Chillon, for example, was the work of a man who passionately desired personal liberty and so devoted himself to the liberty of mankind. The Gothic cathedrals were inspired by the religious devotion and aspiration which dominated the middle ages. They were built, says Emerson, "when the builder and the priest and the people were overpowered by their faith. Love and fear laid every stone." Behind Marmion and Ivanhoe lay a love, contracted in childhood, for the medieval past,which Scott spent his life in trying to realize and reconstruct. Scott's poems and novels were inventions- so to speak, dreams having their key in Scott's ruling impulse, which expressed itself thus through the working of his imagination. In some similar way our ruling impulses are clothed in fictional forms by a play of the imagination in sleep. Every dream, according to Dr. Freud - and this is one of the most important conclusions of the dream theory-has the same latent purport to represent the imaginary fulfilment of some ungratified wish.' The underlying thought may always be expressed by a sentence beginning Would that. In the dream proper this optative is dropped for the present indicative, or rather for a scene in which the wish is visibly represented as fulfilled. In dreams of children the wish is embodied openly; in those of adults it is commonly disguised 'Die Traumdeutung, III, VII (c). and distorted in the representation. Thus, in the world of dreams, we obtain those things which are denied in the world of reality. We get money, place, children, friends, success in love, riddance of our enemies, according to our desires. This fact is recognized by language in which dream is used for wish; to realize one's wildest dream is to obtain one's fondest wish. It is often recognized also in literature. "It shall even be as when a hungry man dreameth," says Isaiah, "and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite. Our dreams do not always fulfil our wishes in the obvious way suggested by this passage. Sometimes these wishes are hidden even from ourselves. We do not recognize them as our true wishes; much less do we recognize that they receive a fanciful fulfilment in our dreams. But at bottom every dream is inspired by and gratifies some desire of the soul. Dr. Freud's theory of wish-fulfilment in dreams was probably not suggested to him by Nietzsche. It is, however, in remarkable agreement with the theory advanced in the Morgenröthe. Nietzsche makes the supposition "that our dreams, to a certain extent, are able and intended to compensate for the accidental non-appearance of sustenance," or satisfaction for our cravings, "during the day." "Why was yesterday's dream full of tenderness and tears, 'Chap. XXIX, v. 8. So in Romeo and Juliet, each dreamer dreams according to his waking desire: "And in this state she [Queen Mab] gallops night by night Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice." (Act I, Sc. 4.) See the translation, The Dawn of Day, 1903, p. 118. The whole section, "Experience and Fiction" is most interesting. while that of the preceding day was facetious and wanton, and of a previous one adventurous and engaged in a continued gloomy search? Why do I, on one, enjoy indescribable raptures of music; on another, soar and fly up with the fierce delight of an eagle to most distant summits? These fictions, which give scope and utterance to our cravings for tenderness or merriment, or adventurousness, or to our longing after music or mountains,— and everybody will have striking instances at hand — are interpretations of our nervous irritations during sleep. The fact that this text [of our nervous irritations] which, on the whole, remains very much the same for one night as for another, is so differently commented upon, that reason in its poetic efforts, on two successive days, imagines such different causes for the same nervous irritations, may be explained by the prompter of this reason being to-day another than yesterday,— another craving requiring to be gratified, exemplified, practised, refreshed, and uttered, this very one, indeed, being at its flood-tide, while yesterday another had its turn? Real life has not this freedom of utterance which dream-life has; it is less poetic, less licentious." Our cravings thus, in sleep, prompt a fictional and poetic gratification or utterance; Nietzsche's expression is very suggestive. Sometimes our dreams come true. Our wishes are seldom preposterous inconceivably attainable. "In the attempt to realize our dreams," as Mr. Havelock Ellis says, "lies a large part of our business in life." Where there is a will there is a way. In waking reality we work toward and sometimes succeed in getting that for which we have longed, and of which we have dreamed. Thus the old belief that dreams are prophetic is justified. For the belief is indeed old and widespread, prevailing among all nations, civilized and uncivilized, and leaving traces in all literatures. "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," says the Lord to Joel, "and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." We may say of prophecy in dreams, as Dr. Johnson said of apparitions: "All argument is against it, 'The World of Dreams, "Aviation in Dreams." See E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, index. but all belief is for it." We shall see presently that this belief is true in a profound sense.1 It will be difficult, however, for various reasons, to give examples which will make what has just been said of wish. fulfilment and prophecy in dreams-clear and convincing to the reader. Actual dreams might easily be recounted, and to these might be added the wishes which they have been found on analysis really to represent. This, however, would be unsatisfactory unless the analysis were also given, which is impracticable. The interpretation of dreams is difficult, involving knowledge of a complicated technique. It does not proceed by a uniform, stereotyped substitution of meanings for the dream symbols as in the old quackery of the "dream books." Though the general principles of interpretation are definitely ascertained, their application in practice varies constantly with the experiences, thoughts, and associations of each individual. Thus any convincing interpretation of examples would take the reader deep into the personal history of the dreamer and would involve endless narrative and explanation. It seems better for our purpose to take an example from the analogous field of waking dreams or "day dreams." When we are alone and our attention is abstracted, when we sit with wideopen eyes before the fire or gaze through the window without seeing, when the pressure of the outside world is thus relaxed, then we "dream being awake." Our imaginations are freed and portray to the mind's eye an ideal world in which our hopes, otherwise vain, are realized. Then we build castles in Spain, or elsewhere, as we wish. If the conditions are favorable, if the imagination is active, and if the mind is moved by strong emotion, these waking visions sometimes become extraordinarily vivid, amounting to hallucinations. The following example, then, will illustrate wish-fulfil 1See Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge, p. 59, on "resolution dreams"; also for dreams actually prophetic, A. A. Brill, New York Medical Journal, April 23, 1910. Dr. Brill first clearly explained the mantic character of dreams. 'Plenty of examples will be found in the Traumdeutung and in the summaries in the American Journal of Psychology, already referred to. ment and prophecy in dreams. Goethe tells how, as he was once riding to Gesenheim after visiting Fredericka he saw his counterpart riding toward him. "I saw myself coming," he says, "along the same path on horseback toward me, dressed, as I had never been, in pike-gray and gold. I shook myself out of the dream, and the figure was gone. But it is singular that eight years later, not at all by choice, but only by chance, I found myself riding over the same path in the very direction my visionary self took, and clad in just these clothes, being again on my way to Fredericka. Whatever the explanation of these things may be, the wonderful phantom gave me at that moment of separation some alleviation." 1 It is noteworthy that Goethe himself speaks of this apparition as a dream. The illusion was apparently stronger than in the ordinary daydream, perhaps because Goethe's imagination was more profound, perhaps because the inciting emotion was more violent. The dream, however, is easy of interpretation. In this, as doubtless in all hallucinations, the wish is father to the thought. This visionary self, going in the opposite direction, obviously embodies a desire to return to Fredericka. And this desire. is actually fulfilled, when eight years later Goethe follows the impulse which inspired his dream and returns to Fredericka, though apparently the impulse did not remain a conscious one with Goethe, for he returned by chance and not by choice. The dream thus becomes prophetic. Even the suit of pike-gray and gold is realized, though this also will seem not at all remarkable after a moment's consideration. Thus dreams always represent wishes, and thus dreams sometimes come true. In his pathetic essay," Dream Children," Lamb recounts a dream in which one of the deepest wishes of his heart secures imaginary gratification; but on awaking he finds himself "quietly seated in his bachelor armchair," and his wish is never in actuality realized. The same wish inspires similar visions in a recent tale, "They," by Mr. Kipling. Poets have often, if not always, been great dreamers, not only metaphorically, but actually, and both by night Quoted by Hirsch, Genius, p. 93. |