You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
[This series of lectures is a continuation of those appearing in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, by Sigm. Freud, translated by Joan Riviere (London: Allen and Unwin). The new series consists of additional lectures XXIX-XXXV.]
LECTURES XXIX-XXX: Revision der Traumlehre (Revision of the Theory of Dreams); Traum und Okkultismus (Dream and Occultism).2
Dream interpretation occupies a special position in the history of psychoanalysis. It not only marks a definite turning point in this science, but it has remained from the very begining the most characteristic and the most peculiar part of psychoanalysis. It has reclaimed a new piece of territory from superstition and mysticism. The strangeness of its theories has invested it with the rôle of a shibboleth, the application of which decides who can become a follower of psychoanalysis.
Freud finds that his own disciples behave towards the subject of dream analysis as if they had nothing more to say about it; for many years they have hardly contributed to its theories. He also deprecates the fact that the psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and a large group of laymen have appropriated only a few formulæ of his dream interpretation; some of them they even misquote, as for example, that "the dream is always of a sexual nature." Moreover, they usually fail to distinguish between the manifest and latent thoughts of the dream and do not seem to know that the anxiety dream does not contradict the wish fulfilment theory. They are also under the impression that one can interpret a dream without the dreamer's associations, and last, but not least, they do not realize that the most essential element of the dream is that which is furnished by the process of the dream work.