Dr. C. G. Jung, formerly a pupil and literal follower of Freud, is
attempting to reform psycho-analytic doctrine from within the fold.[4]
Incidentally, he tells us that there is nothing essentially novel about the
technique of investigating the dream in Psycho-analysis. It copies the
methods of historical and literary criticism and consists in collecting all
the data possible about each item of the dream. These are then called the
dream material. What seems to me novel and characteristic is the
psycho-analytic method of working up this material into an interpretation by
a process of inference. Freud and Jung are today no longer in agreement as
to the details of this process.[6] Speaking of the interpretations of these
authorities, on the basis of extended investigations of dreams on my own
part, I must say that their methods do not seem to be as rigorous, as is
required today in the investigation of literary and historical problems, nor
capable of bearing comparison with experimental psychology.
It must be acknowledged, however, that Freud has infinitely refined the
guesses of earlier generations of thinkers as to the relationship of
sleep-fancies to the waking life. He has conferred startling precision upon
the general proposition of Goethe "that these whimsical pictures, inasmuch
as they originate from us, may well have an analogy with our whole life and
fate." And he has certainly vindicated in practice that dictum of Emerson:
"A skilful man reads dreams for his self-knowledge."[1] But he has
formulated no open-sesame, as psycho-analysts proclaim.
When it comes to the use of symbols, the Viennese professor parts company
with the Concord philosopher. The latter, as we know, decried the mystical
conception of fixed symbolism in any domain. But Freud, although
theoretically agreed, falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the
dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is
now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of
reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout
reference to the primitive demands of the infantile and sexual life. Freud's
fertility in such interpretations has led one of our best-known experimental
psychologists to say, in mingled admiration and impatience: "His utterances
are those of a poet, not of a scientist."