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“Aristotle says somewhere: ‘When we are awake we have a universal world, when we dream, then everyone has his own particular one.’ I think this last sentence should be turned around and we should say: If each one of different men has his own particular world, then it is to be presumed that they dream.”—Kant.
One who has read my long array of chapters carefully could be easily led to believe that he is a finished interpreter of dreams and has become a complete master of this new science. Now I have gone to a great deal of pains to perfect the understanding of symbolism according to our modern standards of knowledge. But with the knowledge of symbolism everything is not yet accomplished. To be sure there are dreams which are so simple that one can translate them without the assistance of the dreamer. But these dreams have also their overdetermination, their individual meanings, which cannot be discovered without the active aid of the dreamer. The longer one works with a person, the more intimately one gets to know him. So that without knowledge of the dream material one can often discover two or even more meanings. One can see through many dreams at the first glance. Yet now and then even the most skilful dream interpreter will meet dreams which remain a mystery to him. It is necessary to have the help of the dreamer.
The usual method of dream interpretation is the one laid down by Freud. We must record the ideas of the dreamer scrupulously and keep our own to ourselves. So we have the dream told to us. It is advantageous to have this recital made a second time. As Freud justly emphasizes, the variations from the first recital are very important. They contain the places which have been subjected to the greatest repression. Now and then the repetition coincides exactly. We begin then with the interpretation.