[4]. The words from “and” to “channels” in the next sentence is a short summary of the passage in the original. As this book will be read by other than professional people the passage has not been translated, in deference to English opinion.—Translator.

There are symbols of universal circulation, found in all dreamers, of one range of speech and culture; there are others of the narrowest individual significance which an individual has built up out of his own material. In the first class those can be differentiated whose claim can be at once recognised by the replacement of sexual things in common speech (those, for instance, arising from agriculture, as reproduction, seed) from others whose sexual references appear to reach back to the earliest times and to the obscurest depths of our image-building. The power of building symbols in both these special forms of symbols has not died out. Recently discovered things, like the airship, are at once brought into universal use as sex symbols.

It would be quite an error to suppose that a profounder knowledge of dream symbolism (the “Language of Dreams”) would make us independent of questioning the dreamer regarding his impressions about the dream, and would give us back the whole technique of ancient dream interpreters. Apart from individual symbols and the variations in the use of what is general, one never knows whether an element in the dream is to be understood symbolically or in its proper meaning; the whole content of the dream is certainly not to be interpreted symbolically. The knowledge of dream symbols will only help us in understanding portions of the dream content, and does not render the use of the technical rules previously given at all superfluous. But it must be of the greatest service in interpreting a dream just when the impressions of the dreamer are withheld or are insufficient.

Dream symbolism proves also indispensable for understanding the so-called “typical” dreams and the dreams that “repeat themselves.” If the value of the symbolism of dreams has been so incompletely set out in this brief portrayal, this attempt will be corrected by reference to a point of view which is of the highest import in this connection. Dream symbolism leads us far beyond the dream; it does not belong only to dreams, but is likewise dominant in legend, myth, and saga, in wit and in folklore. It compels us to pursue the inner meaning of the dream in these productions. But we must acknowledge that symbolism is not a result of the dream work, but is a peculiarity probably of our unconscious thinking, which furnishes to the dream work the matter for condensation, displacement, and dramatisation.

XIII.

I disclaim all pretension to have thrown light here upon all the problems of the dream, or to have dealt convincingly with everything here touched upon. If anyone is interested in the whole of dream literature, I refer him to the works of Sante de Sanctis (I sogni, Turin, 1899). For a more complete investigation of my conception of the dream, my work should be consulted: “Die Traumdeutung,” Leipzig and Vienna, third edition, 1911.[[5]] I will only point out in what direction my exposition on dream work should be followed up.

[5]. Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” third edition, translated by A. A. Brill. London: George Allen and Company, Ltd.

If I posit as the problem of dream interpretation the replacement of the dream by its latent ideas—that is, the resolution of that which the dream work has woven—I raise a series of new psychological problems which refer to the mechanism of this dream work as well as to the nature and the conditions of this so-called repression. On the other hand, I claim the existence of dream thoughts as a very valuable foundation for psychical construction of the highest order, provided with all the signs of normal intellectual performance. This matter is, however, removed from consciousness until it is rendered in the distorted form of the dream content. I am compelled to believe that all persons have such ideas, since nearly all, even the most normal, can have dreams. To the unconsciousness of dream ideas, or their relationship to consciousness and to repression, are linked questions of the greatest psychological importance. Their solution must be postponed until the analysis of the origin of other psychopathic growths, such as the symptoms of hysteria and of obsessions, has been made clear.

LITERATURE

For a completer study of Dream Symbolism, consult the work of Artemidorus Daldianus: The Interpretation of Dreams. Rendered into English by “R. W.”—i.e., Robert Wood. The fourth edition, newly written. B. L., London, 1644. The last edition was published in 1786.