Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/129

 DREAM INTERPRETATION 121

his (missing) affair, whereupon he replied in vexation 'Look to your own dirty ways and I will look to mine' " (S.45). With this reaction the dreamer seems to have prophetically anticipated the only correct reply to Henning's dabbling in the problem of dreams.

Even more annoying than such a dull ignoramus is the case of those who having discoverd psycho-analysis, which they would like to brand for the common good, feel themselves bound to elaborate the theory. Such a one is Lomer, who with disgraceful coolness puts the fundamental conceptions of the Freudian theory on one side as self-evident, and then bases on them his old wives' fable of a dream-book (53) which in lack of critical insight yields nothing to Ms prototype Stekel ("the cautious Stekel" he calls him, S. 31). He is merely transcribing Freud (word for word, e. g. S. 36) when he introduces the interpretation of the dreams of flight with the words "There is a general consensus of opinion that the material of this dream is a harking back to a memory of the well-known childish 'flying' on the arms of grown-up people." On the other hand (S. 37) he wrongfully suspects Freud of assigning to all dreams a sexual (!) wish meaning, and two decades after the appearance of the "Traumdeutung" has the audacity to inform Freud that there are also egoistic dreams.

The author's true originality, apart from his lotto -interpretations, lies in his complete absence of critical feeling. He waxes very vehe- ment over the recognition of the telepathic possibilities of dreams, and here at least acknowledges his debt to a number of other authors who have preceded him on this subject by quoting them. But this is all the evidence that he has to bring forward; for the rest he gives — as he usually does — instances chosen obviously only in reference to their manifest content, and suddenly we find that in view of the mere possibility of a sign of telepathy his whole grasp of dream and symbol has completely forsaken him. This case illustrates very clearly how certain sympathies and tendencies, in short affective attitudes of mind, disturb the judgement and>ring about an adherence to the manifest dream content that develops into an insuperable obstacle to the understanding of any dream problem. Apart from the fact that the coincidence in time of a manifest dream image with an occurrence has no bearing on its intelligibility, it does not prove the existence of telepathic influences. If the dreams were analysed, purely psychic sources for the dream image would at once appear, and perhaps in many cases the whole