Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/56

50 more searching and profound. Freud, however, goes far beyond the fundamental—and, as I believe, undeniable—proposition that dream-imagery is largely symbolic. He holds that behind the symbolism of dreams there lies ultimately a wish; he believes, moreover, that this wish tends to be really of more or less sexual character, and, further, that it is tinged by elements that go back to the dreamer's infantile days. As Freud views the mechanism of dreams, it is far from exhibiting mere disordered mental activity, but is (much as he has also argued hysteria to be) the outcome of a desire, which is driven back by a kind of inhibition or censure (i. e., that kind of moral check which is still more alert in the waking state) and is seeking new forms of expression. There is first in the dream the process of what Freud calls condensation (Verdichtung), a process which is that fusion of strange elements which must be recognized at the outset of every discussion of dreaming, but Freud maintains that in this fusion all the elements have a point in common, and overlie one another like the pictures in a Galtonian composite photograph. Then there comes the process of displacement or transference (Verschrebung), a process by which the really central and emotional basis of the dream is concealed beneath trifles. Then there is the process of dramatization or transformation into a concrete situation of which the elements have a symbolic value. Thus, as Maeder puts it, summarizing Freud's views, "behind the apparently insignificant events of the day utilized in the dream there is always an important idea or event hidden. We only dream of things that are worth while. What at first sight seems to be a trifle is a gray wall which hides a great palace. The significance of the dream is not so much held in the dream itself as in that substratum of it which has not passed the threshold and which analysis alone can bring to light."

"We only dream of things that are worth while." That is the point at which many of us are no longer able to follow Freud. That dreams of the type studied by Freud do actually occur may be accepted; it may even be considered proved. But to assert that all dreams must be made to fit into this one formula is to make far too large a demand. As regards the presentative element in dreams—the element that is