The Science of the Mind 581 



parently, to have an influence upon conscious mental life. 

 Other points of interest are these: that the original exper- 

 ience was an intensely emotional and disturbing one; that 

 the experience was recalled through reflecting on a dream; 

 that the conscious effort of will to banish the unreasoning 

 fears had no effect; that the fearsome experience, though 

 repressed until forgotten, found its way out to conscious- 

 ness through the repeated emotions of fear. This constant 

 fear was stimulated by being in closed-in spaces, that is, by 

 situations similar to the original one, though that was for- 

 gotten. 



There are many such cases as this on record. A great deal of 

 work has been done on similar lines, and the study of disorders of 

 various kinds, having a mental origin, has been put on a scientific 

 basis within the last few years. This is not the place to describe 

 the methods of the practitioner; the principles followed depend 

 on individual cases. 



6 



Dreams 



Much, probably far too much, has been made of the claim 

 that psycho-analysis may be applied to the interpretation of 

 dreams. The starting-point from which Freud's theory was de- 

 veloped was the interpretation of dreams, based on the assump- 

 tion that dreams are the symbolical expression of repressed 

 tendencies. To claim that every dream is determined by the sub- 

 conscious working of a repressed tendency is unwarrantable, and 

 the theory is not accepted by those most qualified to speak on the 

 subject. On the other hand, it would be an extreme view, as Dr. 

 William Brown says, to deny all meaning to dreams, and regard 

 them as merely the confused and jumbled reappearance during 

 sleep of memories belonging to the person's past history, strung 

 together in any chance order. 



The recent work on dream analysis, however, has added im- 

 mensely to our knowledge, and we now possess a theory which 



