In spite of the fact that much is written on dream states their psychology is still in deep obscurity. Dr. P. Meunier (10) advances the view that dreams occur during transitional states from waking to sleep or from sleep to waking. Dreams are a form of hypnagogic states. In this respect he agrees with Sidis (17) that dreams occur mostly in the hypnoidal state which is the transitional state between waking and sleeping. Dreams which do not occur during the intermediary state Meunier regards as abnormal. The causation he ascribes to mental disturbances and to external and internal stimulations. The pathological dreams of cœnesthetic character and points to a diseased organ. The dream may thus be utilized for clinical purposes. In his larger work Meunier (11) maintains the same thesis. Dreams are of the character of hypnagogic hallucinations. An hallucination is an isolated fact or percept, the dream is a continuous whole, an episode, a drama. A large part of the work is devoted to an interesting clinical study of dream consciousness.

        Dr. Bernard Leroy (9) in his study of dreams comes to the conclusion that the final stimulus which causes awakening is not identical with the original stimulus which causes the dream. The original sensory stimulus is forgotten in the total memory of the dream episode.

        An excellent work carried out for a number of years in a true experimental scientific way is that on dreams by Professor J. Mourly Vold (19). The main thesis is that dreams are brought about by the positions of the bodily organs during sleep and in general by kinæsthetic sensations. This is the best scientific study of dreams that has thus far appeared on the subject of dream consciousness. The work should be closely studied by those who wish to undertake an investigation of the psychology of dreams.

        Dr. Edmond Cramaussel (2) studies variations of sleep of an infant by observing the modifications of respirations.

        Dr. Waterman (20) makes a short study of dreams as a cause of various symptoms in psychopathic maladies. He finds, as many psychopathologists have shown before him, that dreams may give rise to psychopathic disturbances. The dreams themselves are based on experiences of waking life. This corroborates the work in psychopathology carried out by Janet, Prince and Sidis. What is questionable is the symbolism of the dreams under investigation.

        Havelock Ellis (3) gives a popular account of dream life. Dr. Ellis accepts the division of dreams into two groups, presentative and representative. The presentative group may be subdivided into two subgroups, "according as they refer to external stimuli present to the senses or to internal disturbances within the organism. The representative group falls into two subdivisions according as the memories are of old or of recent date." He also is of the opinion, now current, that "the internal or external stimuli which act upon sleeping consciousness are not part of that consciousness, nor in any real sense its source or its cause." Representative elements, memory images, constitute the content, the make-up of dream consciousness. Inattention, lack of mental synthesis, disturbance of apperception, emotion, dissociation, fatigue are the factors of dream life. The theory advanced can be put in a nutshell: Sensations and perceptions (under perceptions Ellis also includes memory images, ideas or what he prefers to describe as "internally aroused perceptions―memories") "are not properly apperceived" (Ellis's italics). This generalization gives rise to a speculative theory on paramnesia. In discussing dream symbolism he tells dogmatically that "there can be no manner of doubt that our dreams are full of symbolism." Under the comprehensive term of symbolism he includes language, music, art, the phenomena of synæsthesia, the theory of perception and hallucination in regard to the nature of secondary sensory elements, in fact all forms of association of elements of one sense with those of another.

        The psychoanalytic school is specially prolific in the number of articles on dreams. The quantity unfortunately predominates. Dr. Ernest Jones (6, 7), an earnest follower of the school, gives a resume of Freud's work on dreams (4). There is a latent content and there is a manifest content and four mechanisms: condensation, displacement, dramatization and secondary elaboration. Consciousness acts as the censor that suppresses and alters the latent content. The groundwork of every dream is infantile and sexual and is of high personal significance. Dream analysis helps to penetrate into the depths of the unconscious. The biological function of the dream is to lull consciousness to sleep like a nurse telling a story to a child to make it go to sleep. "When however the activity of the endopsychic censor is insufficient to keep back or alter materially the thoughts of the latent content, then we have a nightmare." To get at the symbolic meaning of the latent content is supposed to be the task of psychoanalysis. The paper is illustrated by a few short examples.

        Dr. Alfred Rubitsek (16) analyzes Egmont's dream. Symbolism characteristic of decadent thought and the stronghold of Freud's psychoanalytic method is naively employed as is the case with all adherents of the school. The symbolism reminds one of the mediæval symbolic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Freud's writings form the psychoanalytic Bible and are quoted with reverence and piety.

        Dr. Otto Rank (14) makes a long psychoanalytic study of a girl's dreams, with notes and footnotes, along Freud's lines. The interpretation is ingenious and full of that rank, sexual, artificial symbolism for which the school is so notorious. The painstaking studies, the loyalty, the devotion to the master's great discoveries are worthy of a better cause and remind one of the disciples of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Dr. Rank (15) a1so discusses a couple of dreams which he traces to an "incest-complex"―Eifersucht auf die Mutter und Zärtlichkeit gegen den Vater.

        Dr. Sig. Freud (5) gives a few examples of interpretation of dream symbols in a few of his cases. His interpretation is full of Talmudic casuistry in regard to the sexual meaning of certain dream visions.

        Dr. Alfred Adler (1) gives the analysis of a false dream of one of his female patients as an illustration of the mechanism of deception in neurosis. The psychoanalysis, as usual with the Freudist, discloses sexual experiences, "psychic hermaphroditism," as the basis of the neurosis.

        Dr. Morton Prince (12) in his investigation of dreams does not find any of the elaborate machinery claimed by the psychoanalytic school. Prince finds that in his cases symbolism plays an important rôle. He finds that dream material is derived from a variety of conserved memories, and from ideas phantasmagorically running through the mind during the presleeping state. In this he agrees with Meunier and Sidis as to the relation of the hypnagogic and hypnoidal states to the content and mechanism of dreams. Prince lays stress on subconscious motives round which the dream activity plays symbolically. Dr. Prince, however, unlike the Freudists, insists that this symbolism and motivization are present only in some special cases. Dr. Prince is very careful not to make sweeping generalizations and as such his study is important both from psychological and psychopathological standpoints.

        Dr. E. Jones (7) sharply criticizes Dr. Prince's work for calling in vain the name of the master's method. To which Prince (13) rightly replies that it makes no difference what the name of the method is provided the method is correct, the facts are true and the work is well done.

        Dr. C. G. Jung (8) undertakes in a patronizing way to give what he regards as the real psychoanalysis of Prince's dream cases which Jung claims have been inefficiently, insufficiently and inadequately studied by Prince. Jung's psychoanalysis is full of unconscious sexual humor. Dr. Stekel (18), who is understood to have used psychoanalysis on tens of thousands of dreams and whose name may be regarded as a symbol characteristic of his own psychoanalysis, presents a short communication of a dream study which as to mechanism, symbolism and cabalistic interpretation well illustrates the elaborate artificiality of Freudian dream psychology and ingenious triviality of symbolic sexual psychoanalysis.

REFERENCES

1.  ADLER, A.  Ein erlogener Traum.  Zentrb. f. Psychoanal., I. Jahrg. H. 3, 1910.

2.  CRAMAUSSEL, Ed.  Le Sommeil d'un petit Enfant.  Arch. de Psychol, 1910, 9.

3.  ELLIS, H. The World of Dreams.  Boston, 1911. Pp. 283.

4.  FREUD, S.  Die Traumdeutung. Leipzig, 1909.

5.  FREUD, S.  Nachträge zur Traumdeutung.  Zentrb. f. Psychoanal., I. Jahrg. H. 5 and 6, 1911, 187-192.

6.  JONES, E.  Freud's Theory of Dreams.  Amer. J. of Psychol., 1910, 21, 283-308. (See author's abstract in J. of Abnorm. Psychol., 1910, 5, 211-214.)

7.  JONES, E.  Remarks on Prince's "The Mechanism of Dreams."  J. of Abnorm. Psychol., 1911, 5, 328-336.

8.  JUNG, C. G.  Morton Prince.  Eine kritische Besprechung.  Jahrb. f. psychonal, u. psychophys. Forsch., I. Hälfte, 1911.

9:  LEROY, B. Sur l'inversion du temps dans le rêve.  Rev. phil., 1910, 69, 65-69.

10. MEUNIER, P.  La Valeur sémeiologique des rêves.  J. de psychol. norm. et path., 1910, 7.

11. MEUNIER, P.  Les Rêves.  Paris, 1910. Pp. 198.

12. PRINCE, M.  The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams.  J. of Abnorm. Psychol., 1910, 5, 139-195.

13. PRINCE, M.  A Reply to Dr. Jones.  J. of Abnorm. Psychol., 1911, 5, 337-353.

14. RANK, O.  Traum der sich deutet.  Jahrb. f. psychoanal. u. psychophys. Forsch., II. Hälfte, 1910, 465-540.

I5. RANK, O. Beispiel eines verkappten Oedipustraumes.  Zentrb. f. Psychoanal., I. Jahrg. H. 4, 1911, 167-170.

16. RUIJITSEIC, A.  Die Analyse von Egmont's Traum. Jahrb. f. psychoanal. u. psychophys. Forsch., II. Hälfte, 191O, 451-464.

17. SIDIS, B. An Experimental Study of Sleep. Boston, 1909.

18. STEKEL, W. Zur Symbolik der Mutterleibsphantasie. Zentrb. f. Psychoanal., I. Jahrg. H. 3, 1910, 102-103.

19. VOLD, J.M. Derm Traum. Leipzig, 1910.

20. WATERMAN, G. Dreams as a Cause of Symptoms. J.of Abnorm. Psychol., 1910, 5, 196-210. 

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