
V The History of Dream Interpretation
梦解析的历史
Three approaches to the understanding of dreams have been presented so far. First, the Freudian view, which says that all dreams are expressions of the irrational and asocial nature of man. Second, Jung’s interpretation, which says that dreams are revelations of unconscious wisdom, transcending the individual. Third, the view that dreams express any kind of mental activity and are expressive of our irrational strivings as well as of our reason and morality, that they express both the worst and the best in ourselves.
These three theories are by no means of recent date. A brief survey of the history of dream interpretation shows that the recent controversy about the meaning of dreams contains a discussion which has been going on for at least the past three thousand years.
1. Early Non-psychological Interpretation
of Dreams
The history of dream interpretation begins with attempts to understand the meaning of dreams, not as psychological phenomena but as real experiences of the disembodied soul or as the voice of spirits or ghosts. Thus the Ashanti assume that, if a man dreams of having sexual intercourse with another man’s wife, he will be fined the usual adultery fee, for his soul and hers have had sexual intercourse. The Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea believe that if a sorcerer manages to catch the soul of somebody in the state of dreaming, the sleeper will never wake up. Another form of the belief that the occurrences of the dream are real is idea that spirits of departed men appear in the dream to exhort us, warn us, or give us other kinds of messages. With the Mohave and Yuma Indians, for instance, the appearance of recently dead relatives in dreams is particularly dreaded. Another concept of the meaning of dreams, closer to the one also to be found in the great cultures of the East, is held by other primitive peoples. Here, the dream is interpreted in a fixed religious and moral frame of reference. Each symbol has its definite meaning, and interpreting the dream consists of translating these fixed symbolic meanings. An example of this kind of interpretation is related by Jackson S. Lincoln in his study of the Navaho Indians:
The Dream: I dreamed of a very large egg made of a hard rocky substance. I cracked open the egg and out flew a young but full-grown eagle. It was indoors, and the eagle flew all around trying to fly out, but it could not get out because the window was shut.
The Interpretation: The eagle belongs to the bird group of the higher spirits which is one of a group of three allied spirits, namely, the wind, the lightning and the birds, all of which live on the top of San Francisco mountain. These spirits can wreak great havoc and destruction if offended. They can also be friendly. The eagle cannot fly out because you must have offended the bird spirit, possibly by walking on its nest, or perhaps your father has committed the offense.
Early Oriental dream interpretation also was not based on a psychological theory of dreams but on the assumption that the dream was a message sent to men by divine powers. The best-known examples of this type of non-psychological dream interpretation are Pharaoh’s dreams reported in the Bible. When Pharaoh had a dream which troubled his spirit, “he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.” When he requests Joseph to interpret the dream, Joseph answers: “God has shown Pharaoh what he is about to do.” And then he proceeds to interpret the dream. The dream was:
Pharaoh dreamed; and, behold he stood by the river. And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favored kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow. And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-favored and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favored and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke. And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good. And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.
Joseph’s interpretation is:
The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one. And the seven thin and ill-favored kine that came up after them are seven years; and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine. This is the thing which I have spoken unto Pharaoh: What God is about to do he sheweth unto Pharaoh. Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: and there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land; and the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason of that famine following; for it shall be very grievous. And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice; it is because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass. Now therefore let Pharaoh look out a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years that come, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine, which shall be in the land of Egypt; that the land perish not through the famine.
The Biblical report says that the dream was looked upon as the vision shown to man by God. However, it is possible to look at Pharaoh’s dream from a psychological viewpoint. He could have known certain factors which would influence the conditions of the fertility of the soil in the coming fourteen years, but this intuitive knowledge might have been available to him only under the condition of sleep. Whether the dream is to be understood in this way or not is a matter of speculation; at any rate, the Biblical report, like many other reports from old Oriental sources, shows that the dream was understood not as something coming from man but as a divine message.
Dreams were supposed to have another kind of predictive function, particularly in Indian and Greek dream interpretation: that of diagnosing illness. Fixed symbols were used to denote certain somatic symptoms. But here, too, as in Pharaoh’s predictive dream, a psychological interpretation is possible. We can assume that in our sleep we have a much finer awareness of certain bodily changes than we have in our waking life, and that this awareness is translated into the image of a dream and thus can serve, to diagnose illness and predict certain somatic occurrences. (The extent to which this is so would have to be demonstrated by the extensive study of dreams of people before the manifest occurrence of illness.)
2. The Psychological Interpretation
of Dreams
In contrast to the non-psychological interpretation of dreams, which takes the dream as the expression of “real” occurrences or as messages from powers outside of man, the psychological interpretation of dreams tries to understand the dream as an expression of the dreamer’s own mind. These two approaches are by no means always separate. On the contrary, until the Middle Ages we find many authors who combine both viewpoints and differentiate between dreams which must be interpreted as religious phenomena and those dreams which need to be understood psychologically. One illustration of this kind of approach is expressed by an Indian author at about the beginning of the Christian era:
There are six kinds of people who see dreams—the man who is of a windy humor, or of a bilious one, or of a phlegmatic one, the man who dreams dreams by the influence of a god, the man who does so by the influence of his own habits, and the man who does so in the way of prognostication. And of those, O king, only the last kind of dreams is true; all the rest are false.
In contrast to the non-psychological interpretation, in which a dream is understood by translating its fixed symbols from their religious context, our Indian source follows the method of all psychological dream interpretation—to relate the dream to the personality of the dreamer. His first three categories are really one, since they refer to temperament—those psychic qualities which are rooted in a constitutionally given somatic basis. He points to a significant connection between temperament and dream content which has hardly found any attention in contemporary dream interpretation, although it is a significant aspect of dream interpretation, as further research will undoubtedly show. To him, dreams sent by a god represent just one type of dream among others. He then differentiates between those dreams which are influenced by the habits of the dreamer and those which represent prognostication. By habits he probably means the dominant drives in a persons character structure; by prognostication, to those dreams which are the expression of superior insight during sleep.
One of the earliest expressions of the view that dreams can be the expression of either our most rational or our most irrational powers is found in Homer. He assigns two gates to dreams: the horny one of truth, the ivory one of error and delusion (referring to the transparent qualities of horn, whereas ivory is not transparent). The ambiguous nature of dream activity could hardly be expressed more clearly and concisely.
Socrates, as quoted in Plato’s Phaedo, held the view that dreams represent the voice of conscience and that it is of the utmost importance to take this voice seriously and to follow it. In an incident shortly before his death, he makes this position very clear:
Cebes said: I am glad, Socrates, that you mentioned the name of Aesop. For it reminds me of a question which has been asked by many, and was asked of me only the day before yesterday by Evenus the poet; he will be sure to ask it again, and therefore if you would like me to have an answer ready for him you may as well tell me what I should say to him; He wanted to know why you, who never before wrote a line of poetry, now that you are in prison are putting Aesop’s fables into verse, and also composing that hymn in honor of Apollo.