INTRODUCTION


The medical profession is justly conservative. Human life should not be
considered as the proper material for wild experiments.

Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds,
loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.

Remember the scornful reception which first was accorded to Freud's
discoveries in the domain of the unconscious.

When after years of patient observations, he finally decided to appear
before medical bodies to tell them modestly of some facts which always
recurred in his dream and his patients' dreams, he was first laughed at
and then avoided as a crank.

The words "dream interpretation" were and still are indeed fraught with
unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of
childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of
dream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.

The wealth of detail, the infinite care never to let anything pass
unexplained, with which he presented to the public the result of his
investigations, are impressing more and more serious-minded scientists,
but the examination of his evidential data demands arduous work and
presupposes an absolutely open mind.

This is why we still encounter men, totally unfamiliar with Freud's
writings, men who were not even interested enough in the subject to