ABSTRACT
Apart from its overwhelming inclination to use metaphors and symbols, the language of the dream differs in other respects from the language of consciousness. In the dream, there is no sharp distinction between alternatives. To consciousness, a thing must be either A or not-A; must be either black or white; must be either two or three. To conscious thought, it is either day or night, and not day and night at one and the same time. In the dream, these alternatives seem to be harmoniously combined. Freud has shown that, in the dream, black often signifies white, the small represents the great, up means down; in a word, that opposites may symbolise one another. In 1909 he referred to a pamphlet that had been published in 1884 by Abel the philologist. Abel had shown that in primitive tongues (just as in the dream) opposites can be denoted by the same word. Thus, in the hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt, the same character may represent both light and darkness. Per se, therefore, this character denotes merely a certain degree of lightness or darkness in the abstract, and we have to learn from the context whether the word signifies light or dark on this particular occasion. The report of the linguistic expert confirmed Freud in his view that in dreams we are using an archaic language, one which fulfils the needs of the dream, but has become inadequate for the needs of our waking life.
