Whilst Freud's psychology has for its predominant note the centrifugal tendency, which demands its happiness and satisfaction in the objective world, in that of Adler the chief rôle belongs to the centripetal movement, which tends to the supremacy of the subject, to his triumph and his liberty, as opposed to the overwhelming forces of existence. The expedient to which the type described by Freud has recourse is "infantile transference," by means of which he projects phantasy into the object and finds a compensation for the difficulties of life in this transfiguration. In the type described by Adler what is characteristic is, on the contrary, the "virile protest," personal resistance, the efficacious safeguard which the individual provides for himself, in affirming and stubbornly enclosing himself in his dominating ideas.
The difficult task of elaborating a psychology which should pay equal attention to the two types of mentality belongs to the future.
CHAPTER XII
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAMS[192]
A dream is a psychic structure which at first sight appears to be in striking contrast with conscious thought, because judging by its form and substance it apparently does not lie within the continuity of development of the conscious contents, it is not integral to it, but is a mere external and apparently accidental occurrence. Its mode of genesis is in itself sufficient to isolate a dream from the other contents of the conscious, for it is a survival of a peculiar psychic activity which takes place during sleep, and does not originate in the manifest and clearly logical and emotional continuity of the event experienced.
But a careful observer should have no difficulty in discovering that a dream is not entirely severed from the continuity of the conscious, for in almost every dream certain details are found which have their origin in the impressions, thoughts, or states of mind of one of the preceding days. In so far a certain continuity does exist, albeit a retrograde one. But any one keenly interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that a dream has also a progressive continuity—if such an expression be permitted—since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence upon the conscious mental life, even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. These occasional after-effects are usually seen in a more or less distinct change in the dreamer's frame of mind.
It is probably in consequence of this loose connection with the other conscious contents, that the recollected dream is so extremely unstable. Many dreams baffle all attempts at reproduction, even immediately after waking; others can only be remembered with doubtful accuracy, and comparatively few can be termed really distinct and clearly reproduceable. This peculiar reaction with regard to recollection may be understood by considering the characteristics of the various elements combined in a dream. The combination of ideas in dreams is essentially phantastic; they are linked together in a sequence which, as a rule, is quite foreign to our current way of thinking, and in striking contrast to the logical sequence of ideas which we consider to be a special characteristic of conscious mental processes.
It is to this characteristic that dreams owe the common epithet of "meaningless." Before pronouncing this verdict, we must reflect that dreams and their chains of ideas are something that we do not understand. Such a verdict would therefore be merely a projection of our non-comprehension upon its object. But that would not prevent its own peculiar meaning being inherent in a dream.