own peculiar meaning and purpose in the actual psychic process. This standard must also be applied to dreams. When, therefore, we seek a psychological explanation of a dream, we must first know what were the preceding experiences out of which it is combined. We must trace the antecedents of every point in the dream picture. For example: some one dreams “that he is walking in a street, a child is running in front of him, who is suddenly run over by a motor-car.” We will trace the antecedents of this dream-picture, with the aid of the dreamer’s recollections.
He recognises the street as one down which he had walked on the previous day. The child he acknowledges as his brother’s child, whom he had seen on the previous evening when visiting his brother. The motor accident reminds him of an accident that had actually occurred a few days before, but of which he had only read an account in a newspaper. Popular opinion is known to be satisfied with this kind of explanation. People say: “Oh, that is why I dreamt such and such a thing!”
Obviously this explanation is absolutely unsatisfactory from a scientific standpoint. The dreamer walked down many streets on the previous day, why was this particular one selected? He had read about several accidents, why did he select just this? The mere disclosure of an antecedent is by no means sufficient; for a plausible determination of the dream presentation can only be obtained from the competition of various causæ. The collection of additional material proceeds, according to the principle of recollection that has been called the Association Method. The result, as will easily be understood, is the admission of a multifarious and quite heterogeneous mass of material, having apparently nothing in common but the fact of its evident associative connection with the dream contents, otherwise it could not have been reproduced by means of this content.
How far the collection of such material should go, is an important question from the technical point of view. Since the entire psychic content of a life may be ultimately disclosed from any single starting point, theoretically the whole
