designated as the "cipher method," since it treats the dream as a kind of secret code, in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, according to an established key. For example, I have dreamt of a letter, and also of a funeral or the like; I consult a "dream book," and find that "letter" is to be translated by "vexation," and "funeral" by "marriage, engagement." It now remains to establish a connection, which I again am to assume pertains to the future, by means of the rigmarole which I have deciphered. An interesting variation of this cipher procedure, a variation by which its character of purely mechanical transference is to a certain extent corrected, is presented in the work on dream interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis.2 Here not only the dream content, but also the personality and station in life of the dreamer, are taken into consideration, so that the same dream content has a significance for the rich man, the married man, or the orator, which is different from that for the poor man, the unmarried man, or, say, the merchant. The essential point, then, in this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not directed to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dream content by itself, as though the dream were a conglomeration, in which each fragment demands a particular disposal. Incoherent and confused dreams are certainly the ones responsible for the invention of the cipher method.[1]
- ↑ Dr. Alfred Robitsek calls my attention to the fact that Oriental dream books, of which ours are pitiful plagiarisms, undertake the interpretation of dream elements, mostly according to the assonance and similarity of the words. Since these relationships must be lost by translation into our language, the incomprehensibility of the substitutions in our popular "dream books" may have its origin in this fact. Information as to the extraordinary significance of puns and punning in ancient Oriental systems of culture may be found in the writings of Hugo Winckler. The nicest example of a dream interpretation which has come down to us from antiquity is based on a play upon words. Artemidoros2 relates the following (p. 225): "It seems to me that Aristandros gives a happy interpretation to Alexander of Macedon. When the latter held Tyros shut in and in a state of siege, and was angry and depressed over the great loss of time, he dreamed that he saw a Satyros dancing on his shield. It happened that Aristandros was near Tyros and in the convoy of the king, who was waging war on the Syrians. By disjoining the word Satyros into σα and τύρος, he induced the king to become more aggressive in the siege, and thus he became master of the city. (Σα τύρος—thine is Tyros.) The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi87 may justly remark that every tongue has its own dream language. Dreams are, as a rule, not translatable into other languages.
