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The writer finds in his study of hypnagogic phenomena grounds for attaching high importance to the functional symbolism of Silberer and therefore, as might be guessed, for belittling the importance of symbols in the psycho-analytical sense and of any censoring activity in the dream. The writer, who quotes his own experiences, seems to belong to that somewhat limited class of subjects in whom Silberer's phenomena are prominent.
In emphasizing the authenticity of his functional interpretations and in casting doubt on the deeper interpretations of the psycho-analytic method, he employs arguments which reveal a striking ignorance of that method. Thus he complains that Freudians are content with the arbitrary interpretation of isolated symbols out of relation to the context of the dream, in ignorance of the facts that the sole use of symbol interpretation in dream analysis is to throw light not only on the context of the dream but on that of the patient's unconscious life, and that the sole occasion on which arbitrary interpretation of a symbol is made is when such a procedure obviously illuminates a context meaningless without it.