Dream Psychology

This book of dream psychology is written in a simple, popular way which makes it readable and understandable by almost any one, without technical preparation or without special information regarding the psychoanalytic psychology. The style is very clear and the various matters discussed are put in a way which should be of considerable help in spreading a sympathetic attitude towards psychoanalysis. The author is evidently a strong adherent of the Zurich school rather than of the more strictly Freudian, and discusses psychoanalysis and the dream more particularly from this point of view. He especially utilizes the method of what he calls constructive interpretation both of symptoms and of dreams rather than of the more purely reductive analysis of Freud. In other words, instead of simply trying to split things up into the material of which they are made, he believes that the dream should be considered from a teleological point of view and when so considered has a distinct prophetical and advisory function. The dream serves as a corrective from the distorting influence of complexes and so offers suggestions as to the solution of the individuals difficulties, more particularly in the direction in which his interests may advantageously take. The neurosis, according to the author's idea, which he takes from Jung, have more to do with the present moment than is conceded by the strict Freudians. He thinks that one has to look at reality as it affected the patient at the moment of the development of the neurosis and in that way one sees what it is in reality that the patient is endeavoring to avoid, what aspect of reality he is running away from. Finally the author, using the word interest in place of such terms as libido, conceives it from the Aristotelian point of view, later emphasized by Driesch, as an entelechy. –The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 6 [1919]