The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Understanding of Dreams, Fairy Tales and Myths: By Erich Fromm. New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1951. 263 pp.

Fromm believes that the understanding of dreams 'is important for every person who wants to be in touch with himself, … the understanding of symbolic language should be taught in our high schools and colleges just as other foreign languages are part of their curriculum, … symbolic language is the one foreign language that each of us must learn'. The aim of this book is to teach this language as Fromm understands it.

In his highly charged fight against authority, Fromm simplifies Freud's concepts of the dream according to which dreams are only expressions of irrational primitive strivings. But Fromm assumes 'that we are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams but that we are also more intelligent, wiser, and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake'. He discovers that we sometimes repress insight or judgment which may come out in a dream. He defines the dream as 'any kind of mental activity under the condition of sleep' and assumes that dreams 'can be the expression both of the lowest and most irrational and of the highest and most valuable functions of our mind'. This theme—whether the dream expresses our best or our worst—pervades the whole book.