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Tie Phenomenologic approach to the dreaming process here being presented has many determinants. Among them are: the evolution of phenomenology and existentialism summarized in Part I* of this paper; developments in psychoanalysis; and my experiences in teaching the theory, technique and practice of dream interpretation. In addition to the expected lack of knowledge and experience, there is also to be anticipated, all too inadequately recognized and confronted in teaching, a burden of assumptions and preconceptions which students carry with them, of which they are quite unaware. Only by bringing to light these presuppositions, which requires special techniques in teaching and specifically in teaching the experiencing of process in therapy, in learning and in life, can the dreaming process in its own and true nature be exposed to be confronted, experienced, and described.
Among the greatest burdens a student brings with him and tenaciously clings to is the compelling need to ask and to answer, but immediately, the question, What does it mean? This question implies that the dream is an it, some kind of circumscribed static thing that you can pick up in your hand and look at from all sides. The question—What does it mean?—and the attitudes on which it is premised have built into them another deeply imbedded Weltanschauung, the delusion of explanation.
I say delusion, not illusion, conception or way of looking at the world, because of the degree of sickness and distortion of reality that goes with it. This delusion assumes the primacy of the intellect, of doing with the intellect, of doing by a technique called interpretation. Spelled out this means that there is a right theory, right technique and a right interpretation that will finally and completely explain the dream. The proof will be that it will make the patient see the truth of the interpretation and it will make him change. This formulation may appear extreme and would be assumed to be present only in novices. But