University of Virginia Library

ANALYSIS OF DREAM SHOWING FULFILLMENT OF A FEAR

I had some trouble in getting any light on this dream, but suddenly much of the meaning became clear and a whole group of associations came up. Undoubtedly the trouble I experienced at first was caused by the resistance of the censor. I will give the associated memories first and explain them later.

I delight in fishing and have spent many happy hours fishing for trout In the clear waters of the Colorado streams; but, strange as it may seem, it was not a memory of any of these which come into consciousness. Instead, there came up memories of three different instances, each accompanied with definite visual imagery, and in such rapid succession that I could hardly tell which came first.

Six years ago last summer, I crossed the Ohio River to spend a day in Carrolton, Kentucky, and on the way back, I bought some fish of a fisherman at the river's edge. This man was barefooted and wore a little greasy wool hat and very ragged clothes. I remember thinking at the time that his work must be very degrading, and that the river fisherman must be about the lowest type in that part of the country. I especially noticed his feet and legs, which were bare to the knees, and which were so sunburned that they hardly looked like parts of a white man's body. In the analysis of this dream, the image of the man as he stood there and the memory of the incident came back with great vividness.

A year or two later, my brother and I were riding along the road at about the same place, and we met a very miserable-looking

specimen of humanity, driving a poor limping horse to a rickety wagon in which were some pieces of driftwood. My brother was in a "spell of the blues" at this time, and he remarked that he was coming to just that condition as fast as he could. The image and memory of this incident also came into consciousness as if it had been waiting repressed just under the surface.

The other memory was one in which I did not figure personally. A year or so ago, my brother was telling me how he and his boy had gone to the river several times and gone fishing with an old fisherman who lived there. My nephew, like most boys, had a desire to become a fisherman or hunter, and my brother had suspected that a little close acquaintance with the way a fisherman lived would cure him of this desire; in this he was entirely right, and after a few trips to visit the old fellow, he had expressed himself as cured of any desire to live the beautiful, pleasant life of a river fisherman.

Without going any further, it can easily be seen that a fisherman symbolizes for me everything that is synonymous with failure. Thus, when I stepped out into the muddy water and began fishing I symbolically became a failure, a no-account, a man who had failed in the struggle and had not achieved success. The very fact that we came down hill to the place of fishing shows, on the face of it, that a downhill career is symbolized. My brother was with me, and that is easily explained as a dramatization of the fact that I was accompanying him on that downhill road to the state of the man in the rickety wagon which he had prophesied as his future. The water in the shallow pools was muddy, and I stepped into it just after experiencing a fear that I would get my shoes wet. Remembering the fisherman's bare brown feet, this can be interpreted as nothing but a very strong symbolization of a drop from a cultured and successful circle to a low and unsuccessful one. I grasp a fish bigger than myself and struggle with it, but am compelled to give it up. Another symbol: my work is plainly too big for me; this question is too much for me to handle, and this thesis will ultimately have to be given up as the big fish is. In fact, I cannot say that I succeeded in getting any

fish out of the water and, therefore, I shall never succeed at anything I undertake, but will land figuratively, if not actually, in the fisherman's hut.

The Mr. N. who was with us, was cross-eyed which, in itself, seemed to have no special meaning; but it immediately called up an image of a cross-eyed man standing at the river's edge at Vevay, Indiana. This fellow was the picture of ignorance and want. He was telling another man about catching a big fish a few days before and how he liked that kind of fish boiled so well, but he could not wait for it to boil, but had fried part of it and eaten it that way. As I heard him relate this and watched his face, the whole event seemed to me to be most disgusting. As I was watching him, some one at my side told me that, because of a drunken spree, he had been disfranchised. He was also a fisherman and another typical specimen of the class. Mr. N., having the same facial defect, though in a much less noticeable way, became identified with him, and I am again found walking down the hill to oblivion in company with this brother in distress. This is bad for Mr. N., but it cannot be helped.

The rainbows seem bright enough, but they bring in another disquieting group of associations. The rainbow is almost, if not quite, a universal symbol of failure. We all know the old story of going to the end of the rainbow for a pot of gold, and if we want to belittle any effort we say that the individual is chasing the rainbow. So here I am again on the downhill road between two failures, following the rainbow to a hopeless condition of muddy uselessness. And if it were not bad enough to be following one rainbow, I am following a great number which must mean that I shall always end in failure whatever I undertake.

But, besides this, the rainbow has special associations for me. The first of these associations which came into consciousness was a little booklet made by a Latin student and handed her professor. I had several years of Greek and Latin under this teacher and at a certain place in the course, he asked each student to make a little booklet of some kind, using as much originality as possible, copy some favorite quotations from De Senectute and hand in the finished product. Every year he gets these out and exhibits them

as a kind of inspiration. One of them had a rainbow and a pot of gold on the cover. I spent a great deal of time and work on mine and made a more elaborate booklet than any other that had been made, but I purposely left it unfinished and inscribed a statement that this was to typify the kind of work I did in that department. Of course it was a joke, but I have often thought that there was method in this madness, and that it really approximated the true state of affairs. This seeming chance association, then, is closely connected with my fear of making a failure which is so clearly dramatized in this dream.

The fact that the dream is placed in Colorado is also important. Two years ago, I spent the summer in Colorado and had a very delightful time, as was natural, being on a wedding trip. But during this stay, I did make a total failure at fishing. I had been a fairly successful trout fisher a few years before, but I had forgotten the art and did not do enough fishing to relearn. In other words, my dream gives me to understand that I cannot be successful even in fishing. One evening my bride and I witnessed a most beautiful sunset, a rainbow figuring largely in the scene. At this time we were debating whether or not to go on farther West as I had originally planned; but circumstances prevented this and instead of going on farther, we came back East or toward the rainbow. This is just one more place where the dream so clearly symbolizes a failure to do what I undertake. I will not carry the analysis any further, though I could find associations by the hundred which would strengthen the meaning given.

Of course I am not at all conscious of having any such fear as this. In fact I am rather inclined to be over-confident; but this is, of course, due to the repressing influence of the censor and only strengthens the analysis.

Examples could be given until the last trump is sounded and the world rolled up like a scroll, but I do not want to keep any one so long. Whatever we wish to make out of a dream—the dramatization of a fear, a joy, a joke (really this is what the Freudians often do), a tragedy, anything that can be suggested, the result can easily be accomplished if only we be allowed the use of Freud's mechanisms and a moderate amount of symbolism.

I have tried to show: First, that any situation or experience can be analyzed with as good success as a dream, and second, that a dream may be made to mean anything. In other words, with Freud's method, one can demonstrate anything to suit his taste or belief. Long ago, the saying was formulated that all roads lead to Rome. This being true, it must also be true that all roads lead everywhere else. Freud employs a wonderful figure of a mystical sphere, with its layers and cross veins and other mineralogical characteristics, to represent the part of consciousness with the repressed factor at the center well guarded. It would be far more to the point if he should represent the whole of past experience as the surface of a country, with its various roads connecting the different centers. The stations would then represent the experiences, and the roads the association tracks between them. If one should travel at random over these roads, he would in time pass through all kinds of towns and cities, but if he started in quest of a certain type, say mountain villages, he would arrive at his goal much more quickly than he would otherwise. The Freudians themselves acknowledge that they have difficulty in knowing when to stop the analysis. Their plan seems to be to travel until the landscape suits them and then get off and camp.

Thus, while I have made no attempt to give positive proof or argument that Freud's theory, in its extreme form is at fault, I have tried to substantiate my argument that there has been no real argument on the other side. And when a theory so spectacular and altogether out of the ordinary is presented, the burden of the proof should very decidedly be thrown on the positive side. We have no obligation or even excuse for accepting such a theory on the mere presumption of the originator.

And that Freud's theory is weird and fantastic is a self-evident fact. Perhaps the Clark University student who very carefully worked it up a few years ago went a little too far when he said it was a chaotic inferno, but at any rate, it is far removed from celestial harmony. Sidis takes about the sanest attitude possible when he refers to certain Freudian writings as being full of unconscious sexual humor. He observes further as does Prince and others

that the Freudian school is in reality a religious or philosophical sect. He says that Freud's writings constitute the psychoanalytic Bible and are quoted with reverence and awe. Kronfeld, in a most valuable criticism, says that in comparison with Freud's conception of the vorconscious and its work, Henroth's Demonomania appears a modest scientific theory.

The attitude of the Freudians is, itself, worth noticing. They are very prone to consider any criticism as very personal, and fly to the rescue with all the fervor of a religious fanatic. A work on dreams, because it does not bear out Freud in all details, calls forth thunderbolts from two continents. This over-anxious attitude indicates that the belief in the theory is based on an emotional condition rather than logical reasoning. Bernard Hart, who is one of those happy individuals who get the best out of Freudianism, shows the difference between the two kinds of belief by comparing our belief that the earth goes around the sun and that the man who abuses a woman is a cad. The cold, indifferent attitude toward the former is in marked contrast to our warm lively interest in the latter, and the reason is that the belief in the one is founded on scientific demonstration and in the other on our feeling in the matter. If we allow this as a gauge by which to measure, it is not difficult to place the Freudians.

We must not overlook the immense opportunity for suggestion in the work of psychoanalysis, both on the subject and the one who is in the work. The Freudians vehemently deny that any of the results of dream analysis are suggested into the mind of the dreamer, but the evidences are all on the other side. Freud, in referring to psychoanalysis of hysterical patients, says, "It is not possible to press upon the patient things which he apparently does not know, or to influence the results of the analysis by exciting his expectations." Such an attitude is fatal when it comes to a question of accurate work. And no less important is the self-suggestion practiced by the Freudians. When we read of Freud's long struggle in an attempt to find something which he felt surely was to be found, we see that he had abundant opportunity to acquire almost an obsession. The long

years since, which he has spent in analyzing dreams and making them all come out right some way, would serve to more firmly ground his conviction, and the same is true of his disciples. Put a man to drawing square moons for ten years, and at the end of the time he will swear that the moon is square.

A large portion of the scientific world seems to have gone mad over the term "psychoanalysis." But this kind of work has been done by all peoples and times under different names. There can be no objection to such an analysis of a dream if it is done by the right person. The dream may be used to aid the dreamer in finding out his own life, it is true, and when we understand psychoanalysis as this process, and only this, it is not objectionable. But if such is the case there is no need of all the mechanism and symbolism. The preacher who uses the Old Testament stories of the wars with the Philistines to illustrate a moral struggle is not to be criticised; but if he maintains that they were written for that purpose, we should hardly feel inclined to accept his position. A very inspiring message might be builded on the text, "The ants are a people not strong, but they prepare their meat in the summer"; but it is hardly possible that such thoughts were in the mind of the writer. Just so, a dream or a story or any other situation may be used to open the locked doors of a life, but to say that the dream has slipped stealthily out of the keyholes and over the transoms and wonderfully, mysteriously and magically clothed itself is quite another matter.