The Interpretation of Dreams / Толкование сновидений

The old physiologist, Burdach,

to whom we are indebted for a careful and discriminating description of the phenomena of dreams, expressed this conviction in an often-quoted passage, p. 474: “The waking life never repeats itself with its trials and joys, its pleasures and pains, but, on the contrary, the dream aims to relieve us of these. Even when our whole mind is filled with one subject, when profound sorrow has torn our hearts or when a task has claimed the whole power of our mentality, the dream either gives us something entirely strange, or it takes for its combinations only a few elements from reality, or it only enters into the strain of our mood and symbolises reality.

L.В StrГјmpell

expresses himself to the same effect in his Nature and Origin of Dreams (p. 16), a study which is everywhere justly held in high respect: “He who dreams turns his back upon the world of waking consciousness” (p. 17). “In the dream the memory of the orderly content of the waking consciousness and its normal behaviour is as good as entirely lost” (p.

But the overwhelming majority of the authors have assumed a contrary view of the relation of the dream to waking life. Thus Haffner

(p. 19): “First of all the dream is the continuation of the waking state. Our dreams always unite themselves with those ideas which have shortly before been in our consciousness.

(p. 6), flatly contradicts the above cited statement of Burdach: “For it may often be observed, apparently in the great majority of dreams, that they lead us directly back into everyday life, instead of releasing us from it.” Maury

(p. 56), says in a concise formula: “Nous rêvons de ce que nous avons vu, dit, desiré ou fait.

in his Psychology, published in 1855 (p. 530), is somewhat more explicit: “The content of dreams is more or less determined by the individual personality, by age, sex, station in life, education, habits, and by events and experiences of the whole past life.”

The ancients had the same idea about the dependence of the dream content upon life. I cite Radestock

(p.