{"product_id":"2940012124579","title":"DREAM PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOANALYSIS FOR BEGINNERS","description":"INTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe medical profession is justly conservative. Human life should not be\u003cbr\u003econsidered as the proper material for wild experiments.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds,\u003cbr\u003eloath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRemember the scornful reception which first was accorded to Freud's\u003cbr\u003ediscoveries in the domain of the unconscious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen after years of patient observations, he finally decided to appear\u003cbr\u003ebefore medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always\u003cbr\u003erecurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at\u003cbr\u003eand then avoided as a crank.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe words \"dream interpretation\" were and still are indeed fraught with\u003cbr\u003eunpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of\u003cbr\u003echildish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of\u003cbr\u003edream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass\u003cbr\u003eunexplained, with which he presented to the public the result of his\u003cbr\u003einvestigations, are impressing more and more serious-minded scientists,\u003cbr\u003ebut the examination of his evidential data demands arduous work and\u003cbr\u003epresupposes an absolutely open mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis is why we still encounter men, totally unfamiliar with Freud's\u003cbr\u003ewritings, men who were not even interested enough in the subject to\u003cbr\u003eattempt an interpretation of their dreams or their patients' dreams,\u003cbr\u003ederiding Freud's theories and combatting them with the help of\u003cbr\u003estatements which he never made.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome of them, like Professor Boris Sidis, reach at times conclusions\u003cbr\u003ewhich are strangely similar to Freud's, but in their ignorance of\u003cbr\u003epsychoanalytic literature, they fail to credit Freud for observations\u003cbr\u003eantedating theirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBesides those who sneer at dream study, because they have never looked\u003cbr\u003einto the subject, there are those who do not dare to face the facts\u003cbr\u003erevealed by dream study. Dreams tell us many an unpleasant biological\u003cbr\u003etruth about ourselves and only very free minds can thrive on such a\u003cbr\u003ediet. Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid\u003cbr\u003eatmosphere of dream investigation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe weakling and the neurotic attached to his neurosis are not anxious\u003cbr\u003eto turn such a powerful searchlight upon the dark corners of their\u003cbr\u003epsychology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFreud's theories are anything but theoretical.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was moved by the fact that there always seemed to be a close\u003cbr\u003econnection between his patients' dreams and their mental abnormalities,\u003cbr\u003eto collect thousands of dreams and to compare them with the case\u003cbr\u003ehistories in his possession.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe did not start out with a preconceived bias, hoping to find evidence\u003cbr\u003ewhich might support his views. He looked at facts a thousand times\u003cbr\u003e\"until they began to tell him something.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis attitude toward dream study was, in other words, that of a\u003cbr\u003estatistician who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing, what\u003cbr\u003econclusions will be forced on him by the information he is gathering,\u003cbr\u003ebut who is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable conclusions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis was indeed a novel way in psychology. Psychologists had always been\u003cbr\u003ewont to build, in what Bleuler calls \"autistic ways,\" that is through\u003cbr\u003emethods in no wise supported by evidence, some attractive hypothesis,\u003cbr\u003ewhich sprung from their brain, like Minerva from Jove's brain, fully\u003cbr\u003earmed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter which, they would stretch upon that unyielding frame the hide of a\u003cbr\u003ereality which they had previously killed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is only to minds suffering from the same distortions, to minds also\u003cbr\u003eautistically inclined, that those empty, artificial structures appear\u003cbr\u003eacceptable molds for philosophic thinking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pragmatic view that \"truth is what works\" had not been as yet\u003cbr\u003eexpressed when Freud published his revolutionary views on the psychology\u003cbr\u003eof dreams.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFive facts of first magnitude were made obvious to the world by his\u003cbr\u003einterpretation of dreams.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFirst of all, Freud pointed out a constant connection between some part\u003cbr\u003eof every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the previous\u003cbr\u003ewaking state. This positively establishes a relation between sleeping\u003cbr\u003estates and waking states and disposes of the widely prevalent view that\u003cbr\u003edreams are purely nonsensical phenomena coming from nowhere and leading\u003cbr\u003enowhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSecondly, Freud, after studying the dreamer's life and modes of thought,\u003cbr\u003eafter noting down all his mannerisms and the apparently insignificant\u003cbr\u003edetails of his conduct which reveal his secret thoughts, came to the\u003cbr\u003econclusion that there was in every dream the attempted or successful\u003cbr\u003egratification of some wish, conscious or unconscious.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThirdly, he proved that many of our dream visions are sym","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47068350611696,"sku":"2940012124579","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012124579_p0.jpg?v=1763552746","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012124579","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}