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: Träume als Sprache der Seele (Dreams as language of the soul). Stuttgart Verlag Adolf Bonz & Co., 1972.
C. A. Meier's The significance of the dream is the second volume of textbooks which are planned to appear in four volumes. The first volume Die Empirie des Unbewussten (The empiricism of the unconscious) was published in 1968 and is often referred to in this present volume on the dream. As a textbook this volume addresses itself not to a wide lay public but mainly to those who as students or future therapists are involved professionally with the study of dreams. Its first concern is historical and theoretical rather than therapeutic.
It is an erudite book which, after a chapter on the basic principles of method, presents a history of the methods which were, and are, being employed for research into dreams. The third chapter traces the history of concepts and theories about dreams from ancient Egypt to modern times. The following chapter, ‘The dream in C. G. Jung's komplexe Psychologie’, handles all the material set down in Jung's published essays on dreams in a clear-cut, systematic way which includes a schema of ‘Suggestions for the working out of dream material’. Finally, in the last chapter the ‘Auflösung’, the solution or analysis of dreams is exemplified by a dream-series.
Prof. Meier is, of course, Jung's successor at the ETH (Swiss Technical College) in Zürich and is in the invaluable possession of the notes which Jung made for his seminars on dreams at the ETH and generously donated to him. Prof. Meier is therefore happy to be able to say that much of what he includes in his textbook is the authentic view of the master. His addendum that nevertheless his own work is original seems superfluous.
It is worth mentioning that Prof. Meier, in spite of his educational task, does not, as he says, wish to offer a recipe book or ‘key’ to dream interpretation. He exemplifies their therapeutic qualities using many examples and specifically a case of severe