As Brill states very justly, “everything which necessitates lying must be of importance to the individual concerned.”
Personally, I have found that, with certain patients, the artificial dream method is productive of better results than the free association method. With the docile patient who has much insight and a positive desire to rid himself of his troubles, the association method reveals quickly the darkest corners of the unconscious. The patient who, on the other hand, constantly answers: “I cannot think of anything,” and is always on his guard, the association method wastes much valuable time and is very discouraging to patient and analyst.
It is not always advisable for the analyst to reveal to his subjects the import of their dreams. It is especially when the meaning of their dreams is frankly sexual that discretion and tact are necessary. In cases of a severe repression of sexual cravings extending over many years, when, for instance, one has to deal with a woman, no longer young and whose attitude to life has been rather puritanical, a good deal of educational work has to be undertaken before the subject can be enlightened.
She must be gradually led to consider sex as a “natural” phenomenon before she can be made to accept the sexual components revealed by her dreams as a part of her personality.
Repressed homosexualism is perhaps even harder to reveal to the subject.
I have found my task infinitely simpler when the subject had done a good deal of reading along psychoanalytic lines or had attended many lectures on the subject. In fact it is my conviction that when psychoanalytic books are read by a larger proportion of the population, thousands of “sex” cases will disappear, together with the absurd fears based on ignorance which are responsible for many a mental upset.
Interpreting a subject’s dreams is the best known means of probing and sounding his unconscious, but in the majority of cases it only helps indirectly in treating the case. When we deal with nightmares, however, the results are more direct and more rapidly attained. A nightmare interpreted rightly will never recur, or if it does, WILL NOT FRIGHTEN OR AWAKEN THE SUBJECT.
Insight will develop which, even in the sleeping state, will enable the subject to recognize that his dream is only a dream and to sleep on undisturbed. A patient who was often terrorized by a dream in which some man stabbed him in the back, gradually came to recognize his unconscious homosexual leanings and analysed the nightmare in his sleep when it occurred again with excellent results. It did not frighten him and gradually disappeared, being replaced by grosser dreams devoid of anxiety.
A patient was bothered by dreams in which he was repelling onslaughts of large beasts with a walking stick or an umbrella which invariably broke and which he was always trying to tip with iron rods or tacks.
He finally gained insight into his unconscious fear of impotence which was dispelled by a visit at a specialist’s office.