The question here considered is whether dream interpretations shall
represent the state of the dreamer's mind or the mere fancy of the
interpreter. Criticism is directed at the aprioristic and oftentimes
hit-or-miss practices of the Vienna and Zurich schools of Psycho-analysis.
For illustration, a simple dream is interpreted by the current methods of
Psycho-analysis: first, according to the "reductive method" of Freud, it is
made out as symbolizing an infantile and sexual wish-fulfilment, expressing
a "voyeur" component of the Libido. Secondly, the dream is re-interpreted
by Jung's "constructive method" so as to gloss over the gross Freudian
phallicism. It is now made to mean that the dreamer is impelled to higher
biological duties, namely marriage and professional success.
The plausibility of these interpretations once shown, they are next proved
to be wide of the mark, by the fact that the dream can be more adequately
accounted for in another way, i. e., by a proposed "reconstitutive method."
This method aims to "reconstitute" the dream-thought (both imaged and
imageless) by tracing the wave of nervous excitation from its origin in
primary stimulus-ideas (sensory or psychic) through a specific
apperception-mass into a consequently derived system of secondary images,
which form the manifest dream content. The derivation of the secondary
images must be concretely followed through the authenticated channels of
association--not assumed on the basis of "fixed symbolism," or any other a
priori conception.
The reconstitution of this particular dream illustrates the reductio ad
absurdum of the two previous psycho-analytic "solutions." The fact that
either of them would apparently have satisfied the demands of the problem,
is characterized as an artifact evolved through the interpreter's deliberate
confabulation and forcing of analogy; thus causing the scant data of the
dream to fall into artificial agreement with the preconceived notions of the
Vienna and Zurich schools, respectively. As a guarantee of scientific
accuracy, it is urged that the interpreter trace the process of imageless
thought (Woodworth) back of the dream, and, in particular, seek the meaning
in the Unconscious Settings-of-Ideas (Prince). The reconstitutive method is
the extension of these two formulations from normal and abnormal psychology
into the field of dream analysis, through the study of Individual
Differences (Cattell) and the Application of Logic (Alfred Sidgwick).
It is not denied that Freud's dream theories serve very well to interpret a
considerable proportion of common dreams; but the psycho-analytic technique
embodies a fallacious assumption that there is a transcendental symbolizing
activity in the Unconscious, as it were a language of dreams. This gives
rise to a biased "will to interpret." The alleged meaning may thus often be
the work of the interpreter's mind although not that in the dreamer's mind.
The reconstitutive method brings into relief the trial-and-error character
of the dreaming process: the organism as attempting the physiological
resolution of persisting and unadjusted stimulus-ideas. Psychologically
speaking, the images evoked in the dream are called trial percepts or trial
apperceptions of the stimulus-ideas, corresponding more or less closely to
the latter; not through analogy necessarily, but through mere contiguity, as
the case may be.
In certain cases, the erroneous apperceptions are observed to form a series
of approximations to the correct apprehension of one of the stimulus-ideas
at a time. In other cases, the apperceptive errors may take the form of a
blended reaction to two or more cues, more or less perfectly achieved.
These mechanisms, when they go wrong, as they often do, produce the
incoherency and bizarrerie of the dream; but they do not preclude a
significant reconstitution of the process of which the dream is a
by-product. Such reconstitutions require to be validated by specific tests
and inferences, of such logical character as to bear comparison with the
methodology of other sciences. The psychoanalytic arguments from analogy,
from precedent and from authority are alike to be rejected.