His attitude toward dream study was, in other words, that of a
statistician who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing, what
conclusions will be forced on him by the information he is gathering,
but who is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable conclusions.

This was indeed a novel way in psychology. Psychologists had always been
wont to build, in what Bleuler calls "autistic ways," that is through
methods in no wise supported by evidence, some attractive hypothesis,
which sprung from their brain, like Minerva from Jove's brain, fully
armed.

After which, they would stretch upon that unyielding frame the hide of a
reality which they had previously killed.

It is only to minds suffering from the same distortions, to minds also
autistically inclined, that those empty, artificial structures appear
acceptable molds for philosophic thinking.

The pragmatic view that "truth is what works" had not been as yet
expressed when Freud published his revolutionary views on the psychology
of dreams.

Five facts of first magnitude were made obvious to the world by his
interpretation of dreams.

First of all, Freud pointed out a constant connection between some part
of every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the previous
waking state. This positively establishes a relation between sleeping
states and waking states and disposes of the widely prevalent view that