THE RECONSTITUTIVE METHOD
"No, gentlemen," the dreamer replies at last, "your
reductions and your constructions are too easy-going, too
conjectural, too much dominated by prepossessions and the
`will to interpret.' The alleged sources or determinants for
this dream may or may not have played the parts you assign
to them; the mystery of the matter must remain inscrutable.
But what your methods, so plausible in effect, certainly do
show is how easy it may be to confabulate an explanation
that goes no deeper than a phrenological reading of cranial
bumps or than a séance in the cabinet of a palmist. Let us
turn away from all this and consider what really happened,
as by the grace of luck I can bear witness. Permit me to
reconstitute the dream as an actual event, by the employment
of certain clues which I was about to give when the
ready-made symbolism of Dr. Freud was interposed."
