University of Virginia Library

THE SUPPOSED LANGUAGE OF DREAMS

These reductions and constructions of the psychoanalytic schools appear to be rather favorite ways of guessing than rival scientific methods. Unquestionably, they must achieve a gratifying number of hits under the easygoing conditions of the psycho-analytic seance. This is obviously satisfactory to medical practice; but the danger

to psychological theory lies in the temptation to overvalue the particular technique that seems to bring about such successes. For instance, Freud and Jung, finding it convenient to assume that the dreamer is attempting to express his latent thoughts by the use of metaphors and figures of speech, have unfortunately come to regard the behavior of the Unconscious Mind as if it were employing a secret archaic code or language of dreams. According to Freud, its symbols have very concrete meanings; Jung, more liberal, says they are only very general. But both authors seem to abuse the language-analogy as a guidance in dream interpretation. That is why psycho-analytic method today suggests not only the free play of poetic invention, but the license of mystical speculation.

If there is any present point in Emerson's remark that "Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and occasional symbol for an universal one," then, in speaking to the psycho-analyst, the psychologist should echo Emerson further, and say: "Let us have a little algebra instead of this trite rhetoric—universal signs instead of these village symbols—and we shall both be gainers."[11]

The reason we shall need a little algebra, as it were, is that many psycho-analysts have fallen into confused ways of regarding their signs and significations.

Consider, for example, the reputed signs of the birth-phantasy, as listed by Freud:[12]

"A large number of dreams, often full of fear, which are concerned with passing through narrow spaces or with staying in the water, are based upon fancies about the embryonic life, about the sojourn in the mother's womb and about the act of birth." . . . Again, "There are dreams about landscapes and localities in which the emphasis is laid upon the assurance, `I have been there before.' In this case the locality is always the genital organ of the mother; it can be asserted with such certainty of no other locality that one has `been there before.' "

(What we should infer from the waking illusion of familiarity, which, Emerson said "almost every person confesses"—on this basis—is too absurd to contemplate.)

Statements like these, though far from syllogistic in

form, are virtually general propositions or laws to the effect that all dreams having the designated earmarks or manifest content, possess additionally and necessarily certain specified qualities in the latent content—in this case, the meaning of birth-phantasy.[13]

Freud and Jung have stood sponsors for many such seemingly far-fetched interpretations. How do they come to be so sure of their ground?