HISTORICALLY speaking, dreams have always been credited with meanings; but,
in a given case, the psychologist must ask, how far does the accredited
meaning represent the mere fancy of the interpreted and how far does it
mirror actual conditions in the dreamer's mind. To seek aught beyond these
is but idle divination. For of all dreams it is true, in the words of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, "that the reason for them is always latent in the
individual." "Things are significant enough, Heaven knows;" he exclaims,
"but the seer of the sign,--where is he?"[1]
Not till the last year of the nineteenth century, did an answer come; it was
Sigmund Freud's work, "The Interpretation of Dreams," which said, in effect,
"Here am I, in Vienna."[2]