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At the present time, when such a great interest is felt in what are called 'occult' phenomena, very definite anticipations will doubtless be aroused by the announcement of a paper with this title. I will therefore hasten to explain that there is no ground for any such anticipations. You will learn nothing from this lecture of mine about the riddle of telepathy; indeed, you will not even gather whether I do or do not believe in the existence of 'telepathy'. On this occasion I have set myself the very modest task of examining the relation of telepathic occurrences, whatever may be their origin, to dreams: more exactly, to our theory of dreams. You will know that the connection between dreams and telepathy is commonly held to be a very intimate one; I shall propound the view that the two have little to do with each other, and that if the existence of telepathic dreams were established there would be no need to alter in any way our conception of dreams.
The material on which the present communication is based is very slight. In the first place I must express my regret that I could make no use of my own dreams as I did when I wrote the 'Traumdeutung' (1900). But I have never had a 'telepathic' dream. Not that I have been entirely without dreams that conveyed an impression of a certain definite occurrence taking place at some distant place, leaving it to the dreamer to decide whether the occurrence is taking place at that moment or will do so at some