This section is from the book "Dream Psychology", by Maurice Nigoll. Also available from Amazon: Dream psychology.
The dream is so common an experience that it is not surprising that the analytical spirit of the present age seeks to understand it. The genius of Hughlings Jackson, which has now begun to inspire English neurologists, foresaw that the dream was the key of approach to many problems of psychiatry. In this country, in the early part of last century, many observers, such as Dr. John Abercrombie and, later, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, realized that the understanding of dreams was closely linked with the investigation of mind. Frances Power Cobbe, in her article on " Unconscious Cerebration " in Mac-millan's Magazine (November 1870), pointed out the myth-making tendency in dreams and gave examples which suggest that she was approaching the theory of compensation in the psyche. The development of theories of cerebral localisation, however, overwhelmed these tentative psychical investigations, and psychiatrists and neurologists became absorbed in anatomical considerations.
To-day the position is altering slowly, and purely anatomical research is falling into its proper perspective. From the anatomical, through the physiological, the spirit of enquiry has come again to the psychological. A vast field of psychological medicine has opened out in which there are already enough keenly conflicting opinions to show that there is intense vitality in this new region.
Within the last few years the Zurich school of analytical psychology under Dr. Jung has parted company with the Viennese school under Professor Freud, the pioneer of dream analysis. The outlook of the Swiss school differed so fundamentally from that of the Austrian school that disunion was inevitable.
In England and America many people are familiar with the Freudian teachings. I shall feel justified in producing this book if it enables its readers to regard the dream, in some degree, from Dr. Jung's standpoint, and I desire to place on record here the debt that I owe personally to Dr. Jung.
In the following pages I have attempted to present, as simply as possible, a view of dreams that is not purely deterministic. Interpretation must necessarily be a personal matter, and therefore I cannot claim that all the views expressed in this book would be supported by the Swiss school.
Maurice Nicoll.
114 a Haelby Street,
London, W.
March 1917.
 
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