Dream interpretation is not an idle pastime or a mysterious performance. Carried out in accordance with certain scientific rules based on common sense and not on mere theory, it has a positive value in health as well as in sickness.

A nightmare whose meaning has been interpreted rightly ceases to be a nightmare. It disappears, or rather, is replaced by an obvious wish-fulfilment dream of the same import, which does not disturb sleep.

The same modification is observable in recurrent dreams which, while not burdened with anxiety, may have puzzled us and created a certain apprehension.

Insight into our own dreams enables us to release more completely the unconscious cravings which it is the mission of sleep to free from the repressions of waking life.

The technique of dream interpretation is unfortunately, like every detail of the psychoanalytic technique, very slow and at times discouraging. The layman trained by quack literature to expect quick results, is apt to appear scornful when a conscientious analyst, asked to interpret offhand an apparently simple dream, refuses to perform that task and confesses that he does not know the meaning of it.

When little Anna Freud dreamt that she was feasting on all sorts of dainties, no elaborate technique was needed to ferret out the enigma of such a vision. When Ferenczi’s patient, however, saw herself strangling a white dog, the wish-fulfilment formula, applied indiscriminately, would have given poor results.

To the patient, the white dog symbolized a snarling woman with a very pale face.

Dream interpretation must never be attempted without the dreamer’s assistance.

Snakes are almost always sexual symbols, but if on the day preceding the dream the subject was frightened by a snake or killed one or played with one, we should require a good deal of other evidence before we could safely assert that a snake dream on that night indicated fear, desire or repression of sexual cravings.

A tooth pulling dream related by a subject who expects to go through the ordeal of dental extraction should not be hastily admitted to be a symbolical dream.Even apparently obvious dreams may assume an entirely different complexion when we inquire into the associations which every detail of them conjures up from the subject’s unconscious.

A year ago or so a Chicago woman sued her husband for divorce because he had been, while talking in his sleep, saying endearing things to his stenographer. That woman was both right and wrong.

The fact that her husband dreamt of his stenographer was evidence that the girl was “on his mind,” consciously or unconsciously. But we could not, without examining the husband’s unconscious reactions decide to what extent the stenographer herself, as a distinct personality, obsessed him.

Every man is more or less of a fetichist, irresistibly attracted by certain details of the feminine body, for ever seeking those characteristics and appreciating them above all others wherever found. When only one such characteristic and no other attracts a man, the man is known as a perverse fetichist.

When the various fetiches which attract a man are found in one woman, let us say red hair, dark eyes and a slender build, we have the foundation for a passionate and durable love.

When only one of those characteristics is found in a woman, that characteristic is bound to attract the man’s attention regardless of the interest or lack of interest the woman may present for him. A red haired woman, while otherwise totally unattractive, might, to a red hair fetichist, symbolize the beauty he seeks and intrude into his dream pictures, although she personally could not attract him sexually in his waking state.

Every one has had the experience of embracing in dreams some person who in the waking state would not inspire the dreamer with any desire. If we analyse carefully the appearance of the “ghostly love” we will in every case notice that he or she is endowed with a certain characteristic which is one of the constituting elements of our “love image.”

The Chicago woman should have taken her troubles to an analyst, not to a judge.

I have dwelt at length on that example to show a few of the pitfalls which threaten the careless interpreter of dreams.

The second rule I would formulate is this: Do not try to interpret one dream. Wait until you have collected a large number of dreams, let us say, twenty or thirty of them.

Then classify them according to their character as follows:

Pleasant and unpleasant dreams. Healthy and morbid. Masochistic and sadistic. Childish or adult. Regressive, static or progressive. Positive or negative. Varied or recurrent. Personal or typical. Hypnogogic and hypnapagogic visions, etc.

Care must be taken then to note all the words and thoughts which appear most frequently in many dreams and which are likely to refer to important complexes.

Whenever possible two versions of each dream should be studied.

The subject should write down his dreams as soon as he wakes up, either in the morning or right after an anxiety dream which may have disturbed him in the course of the night.

The version of almost any important dream which the subject tells the analyst will be found quite at variance with the version written immediately after awakening.

Here is a dream reported orally to me by a patient.

“I saw you through a restaurant window, having lunch with your wife.”

Here is the same dream as I found it in the patient notes:

“You were to deliver a lecture in a park. There was a number of good looking girls there. One especially attracted my attention. As there was quite a little mud in the park she wore rubber boots. You were late in appearing and I went to look for you. I saw you sitting at a table in a restaurant with your wife, waving to some acquaintance on the side walk.”

The discrepancy between the two versions is quite amusing.

After that preparatory work of classification and comparison, the actual work of interpretation can begin.

Hebbel once wrote: “If a man could make up his mind TO WRITE DOWN ALL HIS DREAMS, WITHOUT ANY EXCEPTIONS OR RESERVATIONS, TRUTHFULLY AND WITHOUT OMITTING ANY DETAILS, TOGETHER WITH A RUNNING COMMENTARY CONTAINING ALL THE EXPLANATIONS OF HIS DREAMS WHICH HE COULD DERIVE FROM HIS LIFE MEMORIES AND FROM HIS READING, he would make to mankind a present of inestimable value. But as long as mankind is what it is, no one is likely to do that.”

The technique of dream interpretation could not have been described more accurately nor more aptly.

The person whose dreams are to be analysed should relax completely, stretched out on a couch in a quiet room, listening for a while to some monotonous noise such as the buzzing of a fan or of an inductor, his mind concentrated on the story of the dream.

Then he should tell in a rambling way, without trying to edit the things that rise to his consciousness, all the associations of ideas connected with every word of the dream. While we can interpret our own dreams and jot down our own ideas, the assistance of some sympathetic, discreet person makes the process much simpler. Jotting down notes detracts one’s attention from the images rising to consciousness.

The assistant, however, should confine himself to mentioning the next word or the next part of the dream as soon as the subject seems to have exhausted the associations brought forth by one part of it.

The most surprising results are often obtained in that simple way. Facts which the subject had entirely forgotten, connections he had never been aware of, will suddenly jump into consciousness; the dream will gradually assume a meaning and its interpretation may at times reach an unexpected length. A dream of one line may suggest associations covering five or six pages.

It may happen that in spite of the subject’s efforts to remember his dreams and of devices such as being awakened in the course of the night, etc., the only memories preserved of the night’s visions will be scraps such as “going somewhere,” “talking to somebody,” “something unpleasant,” etc.

In such cases, the subject should be allowed to sink into what Boris Sidis calls “hypnoidal sleep” by being made to listen to some continuous noise in a partly darkened room, all the while thinking of the “dream scrap.”

“While in this hypnoidal state,” Sidis writes, “the patient hovers between the conscious and the subconscious, somewhat in the same way as in the drowsy condition, one hovers between wakefulness and sleep. The patient keeps on fluctuating from moment to moment, now falling more deeply into a subconscious condition in which outlived experiences are easily aroused, and again rising to the level of the waking state. Experiences long submerged and forgotten rise to the full height of consciousness. They come in bits, in chips, in fragments, which may gradually coalesce and form a connected series of interrelated systems of experiences apparently long dead and buried. The resurrected experiences then stand out clear and distinct in the patient’s mind. The recognition is fresh, vivid, and instinct with life, as if the experiences had occurred the day before.”Through this procedure, patients are often enabled to recollect forgotten dreams and nightmares.

Certain patients do not forget their dreams but refuse to report them. In such cases the simplest procedure consists in asking the patient to make up a dream while in the analyst’s office, that is to put himself in the hypnoidal state described above and to tell the images and thoughts that come to his mind. Or if the analyst suspects the existence of a certain complex, he may ask the patient to build up a dream on a topic so selected that it will touch that complex.

A question which audiences have asked me hundreds of times is: “Cannot the patient make up something that will deceive you entirely and throw you on the wrong trail?”

My answer to such a question is emphatically negative.

A study of the literary and artistic productions of all races has shown that in every “story” and in every work of art, the writer or artist was solely bringing to consciousness his own preoccupations, in a form which may have deceived him but which does not deceive the psychologist slightly familiar with the author’s biography.

Brill tells somewhere how his attention was first drawn to the value of artificial dreams and of so called “fake dreams.”

In 1908, he was treating an out of town physician, suffering from severe anxiety hysteria. The patient was very sceptical, did not co-operate with Brill, never talked freely and pretended he never had dreams. One morning, however, he came for his appointment bringing at last one dream. “He had given birth to a child and felt severe labour pains. X., a gynecologist who assisted him, was unusually rough and stuck the forceps into him more like a butcher than a physician.”

It was a homosexual fancy. Asked who X. was, the patient said he was a friend with whom he had had some unpleasantness.

Then he interrupted the conversation, saying: “There is no use fooling you any longer. What I told you was not a dream. I just made it up to show you how ridiculous your dream theories are.”

Further examination, however, proved that the patient was homosexual and that his anxiety states were due to the cessation of his perverse relations with X. The lie he had made up was simply a distorted wish closely connected with the cause of his neurosis.

As Brill states very justly, “everything which necessitates lying must be of importance to the individual concerned.”

Personally, I have found that, with certain patients, the artificial dream method is productive of better results than the free association method. With the docile patient who has much insight and a positive desire to rid himself of his troubles, the association method reveals quickly the darkest corners of the unconscious. The patient who, on the other hand, constantly answers: “I cannot think of anything,” and is always on his guard, the association method wastes much valuable time and is very discouraging to patient and analyst.

It is not always advisable for the analyst to reveal to his subjects the import of their dreams. It is especially when the meaning of their dreams is frankly sexual that discretion and tact are necessary. In cases of a severe repression of sexual cravings extending over many years, when, for instance, one has to deal with a woman, no longer young and whose attitude to life has been rather puritanical, a good deal of educational work has to be undertaken before the subject can be enlightened.

She must be gradually led to consider sex as a “natural” phenomenon before she can be made to accept the sexual components revealed by her dreams as a part of her personality.

Repressed homosexualism is perhaps even harder to reveal to the subject.

I have found my task infinitely simpler when the subject had done a good deal of reading along psychoanalytic lines or had attended many lectures on the subject. In fact it is my conviction that when psychoanalytic books are read by a larger proportion of the population, thousands of “sex” cases will disappear, together with the absurd fears based on ignorance which are responsible for many a mental upset.

Interpreting a subject’s dreams is the best known means of probing and sounding his unconscious, but in the majority of cases it only helps indirectly in treating the case. When we deal with nightmares, however, the results are more direct and more rapidly attained. A nightmare interpreted rightly will never recur, or if it does, WILL NOT FRIGHTEN OR AWAKEN THE SUBJECT.

Insight will develop which, even in the sleeping state, will enable the subject to recognize that his dream is only a dream and to sleep on undisturbed. A patient who was often terrorized by a dream in which some man stabbed him in the back, gradually came to recognize his unconscious homosexual leanings and analysed the nightmare in his sleep when it occurred again with excellent results. It did not frighten him and gradually disappeared, being replaced by grosser dreams devoid of anxiety.

A patient was bothered by dreams in which he was repelling onslaughts of large beasts with a walking stick or an umbrella which invariably broke and which he was always trying to tip with iron rods or tacks.

He finally gained insight into his unconscious fear of impotence which was dispelled by a visit at a specialist’s office.

Not only did that nightmare disappear but very soon after, his dreams changed to visions of successful sex-gratification.

Dream insight based upon the personality of the analyst should not be considered as real insight. When a patient reports, “I dreamt that I was a baby but remembered that Mr. Tridon would call that a regression dream and I awoke,” or, “I felt that Mr. Tridon would characterize the whole thing as a masochistic performance and awoke,” much work remains to be done.

The dreamer must know that his nightmare is a symbol and not merely know that his analyst would call it a symbol.When the dreamer has acquired the technical skill which enables him, after a little concentration and meditation, to interpret his own sleep visions, he is no longer at the mercy of the annoyance called nightmare. When he can see at a glance where the repression seems unbearable, he may devise ways and means to satisfy his cravings more completely if they are justifiable and lawful; if they are unjustifiable or socially taboo, he may seek substitutes for them and, especially as I have explained in another book, free them from the parasitic cravings which make them unduly obsessive.

He who can read the indications of his own dreams, has at his disposal an instrument of great precision which indicates to him the slightest fluctuations of his personality and, besides, points out various solutions for the problems of adaptation which the normal, progressive human being must solve every day of his life.

Oneiromancy is the algebra which enables us to perform rapidly complicated calculations in the mathematics of psychology.