rpretation of Dreams. The interpretation of this dream, as of any other, depends on the spontaneous association of the dreamer to each of its elements. It is the dreamer, and not the analyst, who provides the interpretation. Therefore, in this case, Freud begins the analysis with his own immediate reactions to the dream. It comes to light that dreams are organized in terms of relationships between events and emotions concerning these events. The dream also clearly makes sense in the context of the dreamers current waking preoccupations and activities. The dream-thoughts appear absorbed in characteristically mundane themes, yet, considering what initially appears to be incidental elements in this dream, Freud is compelled to recall events from a more remote past. Thus, distant events are connected with incidents from the previous day through an unpredictable series of links. The dream-thoughts are consistent and logical, it is only the complexity of the allusions through which they are expressed that give rise to the appearance of over-complication and arbitrariness. So-called indifferent material in the dream can serve as a useful bridge between two sets of events on the day previous to a dream. It is also characteristic, Freud claims, for each element of the dreams content to be overdetermined, i.e., to be over-represented in the dream-thoughts. Though Freud occasionally refers to the ultimate meaning of a dream, the meaning of a dream consists simply in the dreamers articulation of associations to its images. A problem here is that this process of anatomizing and connecting the elements of the dream with memories of both significant and indifferent events might be continued indefinitely, with no certainty of reaching a definite interpretation.What can be difficult for the reader to understand, is the manner of representation that characterizes the process of dreaming. Freud uses an example of a botanical monograph dream to explicate a...
