When they were recalled after awakening the dreams were regarded as either the friendly or hostile manifestation of some higher powers, demoniacal and Divine. With the rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among educated persons who doubt that the dream is the dreamer’s own psychical act.
There is, firstly, the psychical significance of the dream, its position with regard to the psychical processes, as to a possible biological function; secondly, has the dream a meaning, can sense be made of each single dream as of other mental syntheses? According to some doctors, dreams are provoked and initiated exclusively by stimuli proceeding from the senses or the body, which either reach the sleeper from without or are accidental disturbances of his internal organs.
(1) What is the psychical process which has transformed the latent content of the dream into its manifest content?
(2) What is the motive or the motives which have made such transformation exigent?
The other problems of the dream, the inquiry as to its stimuli, as to the source of its materials, as to its possible purpose, the function of dreaming, the forgetting of dreams. The contrast between manifest and latent dream-content is clearly only of value for the dreams of the second and more especially for those of the third class. Before leaving these infantile dreams, which are obviously unrealized desires, we must not fail to mention another chief characteristic of dreams, one that has been long noticed, and one which stands out most clearly in this class.
I can replace any of these dreams by a phrase expressing a desire. If the sea trip had only lasted longer; if I were only washed and dressed; if I had only been allowed to keep the cherries instead of giving them to my uncle. But the dream gives something more than the choice, for here the desire is already realized; its realization is real and actual. The dreams can be divided into three classes.
Intelligible Dreams
1. Intelligible dreams, which allow us to penetrate into our psychical life without further ado. Such dreams are numerous; they are usually short, and, as a general rule, do not seem very noticeable, because everything remarkable or exciting surprise is absent.
2. A second group is formed by those dreams which are indeed self-coherent and have a distinct meaning, but appear strange because we are unable to reconcile their meaning with our mental life.
3. The third group of dreams belong which are void of both meaning and intelligibility; they are incoherent, complicated, and meaningless.
The dream presentations consist chiefly, if not wholly, of scenes and mainly of visual sense images. Hence a kind of transformation is not entirely absent in this class of dreams, and this may be fairly designated as the dream work. An idea merely existing in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of its accomplishment