ABSTRACT
Dreaming is a universal psychical functioning, common alike to primitive and cultured peoples. Dreams may not be remembered in waking consciousness, but subterranean psychical activity is, while life lasts, as unceasing as physiological processes of which also we are not aware in deep sleep. A working knowledge of the dream as a typical functioning of the psyche—that is, knowledge of the dream mechanisms and of the theory of unconscious symbolism—is therefore indispensable for dream interpretation. This knowledge may be gained intellectually from the recommended books, but emotional conviction is the result only of personal analytic experience. The dream reveals within itself those unconscious mental mechanisms evolved during the course of development for the purpose of controlling and shaping the primitive instinctual self towards that norm of behaviour demanded by the contemporary civilization. The dream manifests the timelessness of the unconscious mind. It regards neither the temporal nor spatial factors that characterize reality.
