As a matter of fact, this conclusion or generalization applies not alone to
dreams but to any single element in the objective or subjective world which
may be seized upon as the initial stimulus and from which, as a
starting-point, association of ideas, in ordinary conversation or aided by
any of the more or less experimental or artificial but valuable methods
heretofore mentioned, may be begun and continued ad libitum or even ad
infinitum, under the tactful guidance and judgment of the investigator. For
example, if I may be permitted to tread upon the dangerous path of
near-sensationalism or extremism, I may mention that were I to take even so
common, so widely used, and so relatively insignificant a word as the
definite article "the" as the initial stimulus, and have one of my fellowmen
or fellow-women (whose full co-operation, it is assumed, I have previously
obtained) give me one or more free or random word associations, and
thereafter, with these newly acquired elements, continued to forge my way
into the thickly wooded and unexplored recesses of the unknown and
mysterious forest of the mind, I doubt not but that I should achieve the
same results as if I had started upon my journey with a dream. If this be
true, and I firmly believe that it is, in the case of that universally used
and apparently inconsequential word "the," to which the normal person can be
expected to have such a large number of associations, of varying degrees of
intimacy or remoteness, how much truer is it when we have such a definite
mental fact or mental state as a dream as the starting-point of our hunting
expedition?

The dream gives us something tangible to start with, something near at home
to the dreamer or patient, something interesting and amusing to him,
something baffling and so frequently unintelligible to him, and, as a
consequence, a more conscientious, earnest and wholehearted co-operation can
be obtained from the person whose mental life is being investigated. Here is
something vivid to him, something of personal interest to him. And so we can