was a _symbol_. Serious-minded persons laugh at these efforts--"Dreams
are but sea-foam!"

One day I discovered to my amazement that the popular view grounded in
superstition, and not the medical one, comes nearer to the truth about
dreams. I arrived at new conclusions about dreams by the use of a new
method of psychological investigation, one which had rendered me good
service in the investigation of phobias, obsessions, illusions, and the
like, and which, under the name "psycho-analysis," had found acceptance
by a whole school of investigators. The manifold analogies of dream life
with the most diverse conditions of psychical disease in the waking
state have been rightly insisted upon by a number of medical observers.
It seemed, therefore, _a priori_, hopeful to apply to the interpretation
of dreams methods of investigation which had been tested in
psychopathological processes. Obsessions and those peculiar sensations
of haunting dread remain as strange to normal consciousness as do
dreams to our waking consciousness; their origin is as unknown to
consciousness as is that of dreams. It was practical ends that impelled
us, in these diseases, to fathom their origin and formation. Experience
had shown us that a cure and a consequent mastery of the obsessing ideas
did result when once those thoughts, the connecting links between the
morbid ideas and the rest of the psychical content, were revealed which
were heretofore veiled from consciousness. The procedure I employed for
the interpretation of dreams thus arose from psychotherapy.

This procedure is readily described, although its practice demands
instruction and experience. Suppose the patient is suffering from
intense morbid dread. He is requested to direct his attention to the
idea in question, without, however, as he has so frequently done,
meditating upon it. Every impression about it, without any exception,