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Enough has been said to suggest, I think, that while Dr. Freud may be honored as the father of dream analysis, with Dr. Jung as its foster-father, yet, to neither of these gentlemen of psycho-analytic fame should be conceded the right to bring up the "child!"
This implies studying by association-tests what James called the psychic overtones, and what Prince has, in his teaching, called the unconscious settings-of-ideas, which determine meaning. Care must be taken to find the real determinants, and to set aside spurious dream material which is not always facilitated by the psycho-analytic methods.
But there is also a resistance based on sound logical criticism. Judged by this standard, Freud's theory appears dangerously inaccurate and needs revision. Dr. C. G. Jung, formerly a pupil and literal follower of Freud, is attempting to reform psycho-analytic doctrine from within the fold.
An examination of the methods they exemplify in individual practice and in the large literature of the psycho-analytic movement shows sufficient reason, in my view, why the psycho-analytic theory of dreams should still be greeted with skepticism. Psycho-analysts tell us that repugnance for the subject-matter has delayed acceptance of their essentially sexual interpretations.
These reductions and constructions of the psychoanalytic schools appear to be rather favorite ways of guessing than rival scientific methods. Unquestionably, they must achieve a gratifying number of hits under the easygoing conditions of the psycho-analytic seance.
What seems to me novel and characteristic is the psycho-analytic method of working up this material into an interpretation by a process of inference. Freud and Jung are today no longer in agreement as to the details of this process.
According to Freud, its symbols have very concrete meanings; Jung, more liberal, says they are only very general. But both authors seem to abuse the language-analogy as a guidance in dream interpretation. That is why psycho-analytic method today suggests not only the free play of poetic invention, but the license of mystical speculation.
From a psycho-analytic standpoint, the problem presented in Dr. Southard's paper is "Why is a certain symbol chosen in one case and another in another individual?" It may well be that specific organic factors operate here. One could imagine that the mechanism is purely psychological.
In formulating a more scientific method of his own, which he calls the "constructive method," Jung reveals a change of views so extensive as to suggest, on several points, almost a conversion to the ideas that Dr. Morton Prince expressed in 1910, as to the insecurity of the psycho-analytic ideas of symbolism.
The whole development of psycho-analytic theory, up to a certain point, has been based on the actual recovery of patients, if you do not like the use of the word cure, from particular symptoms. Then this has been generalized. Now that has opened an enormous field for ratiocination.
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