Lendle

selections from: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DREAMS A DREAM is a psychic structure which at first sight appears to be in striking contrast with conscious thought, because judging by its form and substance, it apparently does not lie within the continuity of development of the conscious contents, it is not integral to it, but is a mere external and apparently accidental occurrence. Its mode of genesis is in itself sufficient to isolate a dream from the other contents of the conscious, for it is a survival of a peculiar psychic activity which takes place during sleep, and does not originate in the manifest and clearly logical and emotional continuity of the event experienced. But a careful observer should have no difficulty in discovering that a dream is not entirely severed from the continuity of the conscious, for in almost every dream certain details are found which have their origin in the impressions, thoughts, or states of mind of one of the preceding days. In so far a certain continuity does exist, albeit a retrograde one. But any one keenly interested in the dream problem cannot have failed to observe that a dream has also a progressive continuity—if such an expression be permitted—since dreams occasionally exert a remarkable influence upon the conscious mental life, even of persons who cannot be considered superstitious or particularly abnormal. These occasional aftereffects are usually seen in a more or less distinct change in the dreamer's frame of mind. and ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER-DREAMS The symbolism of numbers which greatly engaged the imaginative philosophy of earlier centuries has again acquired a fresh interest from the analytic investigations of Freud and his school. But in the material of number dreams we no longer discover conscious puzzles of symbolic concatenations of numbers but the unconscious roots of the symbolism of numbers. There is scarcely anything quite fundamentally new to offer in this sphere since the presentations of Freud, Adler and Stekel. It must here suffice to corroborate their experiences by recording parallel cases. I have had under observation a few cases of this kind which are worth reporting for their general interest. The first three instances are from a middle-aged married man whose conflict of the moment was an extra-conjugal love affair. The piece of the dream from which I take the symbolised number is: in front of the manager his general subscription. The manager comments on the high number of the subscription. It reads 2477. The analysis of the dream brings out a rather ungentlemanly reckoning up of the expense of the affair which is foreign to the generous nature of the dreamer, and which the unconscious makes use of as a resistance to this affair. The preliminary interpretation is therefore, that the number has some financial importance and origin. A rough estimate of the expenses so far leads to a number which in fact approaches 2477 francs; a more exact reckoning, however, gives 2387