PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL SOCIETY 1920 June 23rd. October 20th. November 24th. January 26th. April 27th. May 25th. June 22nd. MEDICAL SECTION An Outline of the Idea of Rebirth in Dreams, by MAURICE NICOLL. The Problem of the Neurasthenic Pensioner, by MILLAIS CULPIN. "Mary Rose" and the Problem of the Infantile Personality, by CONSTANCE LONG. Enforced Psycho-synthesis in Certain Cases of Analysis, by PAUL BOUSFIELD. Emotion and Eye Symptoms, by W. INMAN. The Influence of the Endocrines in the Psychoneuroses, by METHODS OF DREAM-ANALYSIS1. By W. H. R. RIVERS. THE Conditions under which dreams are recorded and analysed have a great influence upon the results obtained in the analysis. Thus, the doctrines concerning dreams held by Freud, Jung and psycho-analysts generally are greatly affected by the fact that most of the dreams they analyse and make the basis of their theoretical views are obtained in the course of psycho-analysis, i.e. in the course of a long-continued process of a complex and peculiar kind in which there is a special relation, again of a peculiar kind, between the person whose dreams are being analysed and the person who is performing the analysis. Freud has even shown reason to believe2 that some of the dreams of his patients have been the outcome of a wish on their part that the views on which their treatment is being based should be shown to be wrong. If factors, such as resistance to the views of the analyst, which enter into the process of psychoanalysis can have an effect of this crude kind, we can be confident that influences of a far more subtle kind, influences less easily detected, must be continually in action, and that, on the whole, the influence of psychoanalysis will be to produce dreams which will tend to confirm the views. of those conducting the analysis. We can have little doubt, for instance, that an analyser who believes, or who is generally supposed to believe, that all psycho-neuroses, if not all dreams, are due to disturbance of the sexual instinct will through this belief, or supposed belief, influence the dreams of his patients and, if he is known to hold this belief, he will produce this effect even if he is careful not to refer to sex in any way in the course of his analysis. It is therefore by no means strange that such a physician as Stekel, who believes that the context of nearly all dreams is sexual3 and evidently discusses this belief with his patients, should find sexual motives so prominent in their dreams. We can also be confident that one who is believed by his patients, or his prospective patients, to hold this belief will have a similar effect even if he says or does nothing wittingly during the analysis to confirm the belief. At the same time the converse must be true. There is the similar danger that 1 Read at a General Meeting of the British Psychological Society, July 23, 1921. 2 Die Traumdeutung, 5te Auf., Leipzig and Wien, 1919, p. 106 (Brill's translation, p. 127). 3 Die Sprache des Traumes, Wiesbaden, 1911, S. 13. J. of Psych. (Med. Sect.) I 7 analyses of dreams which take place under the dominant influence of one who disbelieves, or is supposed to disbelieve, in the influence of sex will tend to give results in accordance with this attitude, or supposed attitude, of the analyser. Again, if wishes concerning the truth or falsity of a theory can have the effect on the dreams of patients which Freud supposes, how far reaching must be the effects which such wishes must have upon the dreams of one who has formulated a theory or has adopted with fervour the theory of another. The self-analysis of dreams must be exposed in equal or even greater measure to the possibility of influences tending to produce dreams which support, or can be utilised in support of, the theory which is dominating the dreamer. Equally important must be the conditions under which dreams are analysed after they have occurred. It must make a great difference whether the dream is analysed at once or after an interval of hours or days; whether the analysis is carried out by the dreamer himself or by another; whether the incidents of the dream are remembered and recorded before the analysis begins or whether they are only brought to light in the course of the analysis; whether the associations with the dream are left wholly open, whether they start from different selected elements of the manifest content, and whether they are assisted by some special process of word-association. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, it must make a great difference in the case of analysis by other than the dreamer to how great an extent the analyser intervenes in the process of analysis and tends, perhaps even unwittingly, to direct the course of the thoughts to which the analysis leads. If dream-analysis is exposed to all these sources of error, and we may take it as certain that their influence cannot be excluded, it becomes of the utmost importance that one who utilises dreams in the study of psychological problems should make it his business to record as fully as possible the conditions under which the dreams he studies have been experienced, recorded and analysed. It becomes equally important that those engaged in the study of dreams should consider fully different methods of record and analysis and should seek to discover procedures which will at least reduce to as small proportions as possible the various sources of error to which dream-analysis is open. As I am at present engaged in such an attempt to utilise an extensive record both of my own dreams and of the dreams of others, I propose to employ this opportunity in giving an account of my own procedure together with a criticism of the procedure now in vogue among psycho-analysts |