The Interpretation of Dreams

interpretation by symbolism and
approaches more nearly to the second or cipher method. Like this, it
is an interpretation in detail, not en masse; like this, it
conceives the dream, from the outset, as something built up, as a
conglomerate of psychic formations.
In the course of my psycho-analysis of neurotics I have already
subjected perhaps more than a thousand dreams to interpretation, but I
do not wish to use this material now as an introduction to the
theory and technique of dream-interpretation. For quite apart from the
fact that I should lay myself open to the objection that these are the
dreams of neuropaths, so that the conclusions drawn from them would
not apply to the dreams of healthy persons, there is another reason
that impels me to reject them. The theme to which these dreams point
is, of course, always the history of the malady that is responsible
for the neurosis. Hence every dream would require a very long
introduction, and an investigation of the nature and aetiological
conditions of the psychoneuroses, matters which are in themselves
novel and exceedingly strange, and which would therefore distract
attention from the dream-problem proper. My purpose is rather to
prepare the way, by the solution of the dream-problem, for the
solution of the more difficult problems of the psychology of the
neuroses. But if I eliminate the dreams of neurotics, which constitute
my principal material, I cannot be too fastidious in my treatment of
the rest. Only those dreams are left which have been incidentally
related to me by healthy persons of my acquaintance, or which I find
given as examples in the literature of dream-life. Unfortunately, in
all these dreams I am deprived of the analysis without which I
cannot find the meaning of the dream. My mode of procedure is, of
course, less easy than that of the popular cipher method, which
translates the given dream-content by reference to an established key;
I, on the contrary, hold that the same dream-content may conceal a
different meaning in the case of different persons, or in different
connections. I must, therefore, resort to my own dreams as a source of
abundant and convenient material, furnished by a person who is more or
less normal, and containing references to many incidents of everyday
life. I shall certainly be confronted with doubts as to the
trustworthiness of these self-analyses and it will be said that
arbitrariness is by no means excluded in such analyses. In my own
judgment, conditions are more likely to be favourable in
self-observation than in the observation of others; in any case, it is
permissible to investigate how much can be accomplished in the
matter of dream-interpretation by means of self-analysis. There are
other difficulties which must be overcome in my own inner self. One
has a comprehensible aversion to exposing so many intimate details
of one's own psychic life, and one does not feel secure against the
misinterpretations of strangers. But one must be able to transcend
such