In the following pages I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological
technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the
application of this technique every dream will reveal itself as a
psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be
assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking
state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which
underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from
these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or
cooperation is responsible for our dreams. This done, my investigation
will terminate, as it will have reached the point where the problem
of the dream merges into more comprehensive problems, and to solve
these we must have recourse to material of a different kind. I
shall begin by giving a short account of the views of earlier
writers on this subject, and of the status of the dream-problem
in contemporary science; since in the course of this treatise
I shall not often have occasion to refer to either. In spite
of thousands of years of endeavour, little progress has been made
in the scientific understanding of dreams. This fact has been
so universally acknowledged by previous writers on the subject
that it seems hardly necessary to quote individual opinions. The
reader will find, in the works listed at the end of this
work, many stimulating observations, and plenty of interesting material
relating to our subject, but little or nothing that concerns the
true nature of the dream, or that solves definitely any of
its enigmas. The educated layman, of course, knows even less
of the matter. The conception of the dream that was held
in prehistoric ages by primitive peoples, and the influence which
it may have exerted on the formation of their conceptions of
the universe, and of the soul, is a theme of such great
interest that it is only with reluctance that I refrain
from dealing with it in these pages. I will refer the
reader to the well-known works of Sir John Lubbock (Lord
Avebury), Herbert Spencer, E. B. Tylor, and other writers; I
will only add that we shall not realize the importance
of these problems and speculations until we have completed the task
of dream interpretation that lies before us.