Discussion of John A. Lindon's Article, On Freud's Concept of Dream-Action

The essay by Dr. London brought to mind the famous chemist Kekule who declared that his discovery of the Benzol Theory (Benzol ring) started with a dream of his. Kekule, in his dream, saw various shapes and forms (atoms) moving in front of his eyes, moving in a long row, first the larger shapes followed by smaller ones, twisting and turning like snakes. Then one of the snakes caught its own tail in its mouth. Kekule suddenly awoke. The rest of the night he spent working out his hypothesis. He interpreted his dream in a way which showed that he understood his dream wish—and the relationship between the dream and his scientific discovery.

Dr. Alfred Robitsek published Kekule's interpretation adding his own thoughts and elaboration concerning the latent content of Kekule's dream and his observation about “not dream oriented” peoples' capacity to understand their dreams.1

I agree that Dr. V.'s dream fits into Freud's concept about “dream-action” as well as in the category that Freud called “dreams from above” in his remarks about the interpretation of a dream of Descartes.2

These dreams, Freud explained, are a “formulation of ideas that could have been

created just as well in the waking state as in a state of sleep.” Freud described his position in the analysis of this type of dream, “We cannot understand the dream. The dreamer, or the patient, can translate it immediately and without difficulty. The dreamer in such dreams as ‘dreams from above’ interprets without difficulty because the dream's content is close to his conscious thoughts.”

S. Schoenberger cites Freud's further remark in connection with the dream of Descartes, “Even when the material available is unsatisfactory and incomplete, it sometimes enables us to make constructions with useful results.”