On Dreaming and our Inclinations

Dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

For a number of reasons I had a lot of difficulty trying to clarify my thinking about the important and challenging preceeding chapters. For several weeks after I received them I spent considerable time pondering the various ideas presented by the authors. I weighed their arguments in my mind, trying to reformulate their notions in terms more congenial to me. After a while I found that I was becoming increasingly irritated because I was unable to clarify my thinking, to write down what I had to say and have done with it. Then one night I had a disturbing dream. I awoke from it feeling anxious; I thought about it briefly and then fell back to sleep. On the way to the train the next morning I thought about it again. It wasn't all that complicated, but it was still puzzling.

This was the dream. I was having a discussion with someone I thought I knew—perhaps a colleague. He was talking to me about