Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/88

 8o BOOK REVIEWS

to dreams* which 'Freud unfortunately allows himself to make' (p. 88) we have the following; 'Freud says that all (italics in the original) dreams have ultimately a sexual significance; yet some of the dreams which he himself gives are concerned with quite other things' (p. 89). We fail to see the incompatibility here, for many neurotic phantasies are 'concerned with quite other things' although they all 'ultimately have a sexual significance'. But it happens that the premise is quite untrue. Freud, so far from ever having made this statement, has ex- pressly denied it {Traumdeuiung, S. 270). The third constituent of the theory, or rather a part of it, is singled out from the rest and is so distorted in presentation as to make it appear that the 'dominant Freudian conception of the dream ' is that it is ' a means of experiencing in fancy the fulfilment of repressed wishes' (p. no). So, according to Freud, the object and function of dreaming is to enable us to enjoy forbidden lascivious pleasures I We wonder whether Professor Valentine assimilates new theories in his own subject in this fashion. He elsewhere {p. 92) amiably volunteers to improve Professor Freud's education by referring him to a well-known passage in Plato's 'Republic' of which 'I believe he nowhere shows a knowledge'. If one is unable to learn from Freud one can at least teach him.

The wish-fulfihnent constituent of Freud's theory of dreams finds in general no favour with Professor Valentine. 'There is, I think, no doubt that some dreams cannot be explained as the obvious or disguised fulfilment of either repressed or unrepressed wishes, and Freud even gives some examples himself in the Traumdeuiung' (p. 90). Needless to say to anyone who has read the Traiimdetitung, Freud does nothing of the sort With fear-dreams Professor Valentine makes a gallant attempt to find some sort of wish-fulfilment in the fascination of the fear itself, since 'in sleep that rational control which would refuse to dwell pain- fully on imaginary evils is either absent altogether or is reduced to a minimum. . . Perhaps a profounder psychology might even say that these thoughts of evil are due to a species of sub-conscious craving, for there seems to be inherent in man some strange attraction towards the fearful. ., Thus, in a sense, it may be said that our fear-dreams may be fulfilling some sub-conscious primitive craving not satisfied in waking life ' (pp. 0, 97). But in general he finds Freud's interpretation of fear-dreams 'most unsatisfactory' and 'still more inadequate in view of the appearance of so many fear-dreams at a very early age, and at a period when Freud himself holds that dreams are interpretable on the basis of their manifest content' (p. 95). This is in reference to dreams of his own boy, between the ages of five and six, which were in a considerable number of cases dreams of being trampled on by horses or being chased by bears (i. e. typical father symbols). As to Freud's imagined statement that all dreams up to a fixed date are

«»