"During the epoch which may be described as prescientific, men had no difficulty in finding an explanation of dreams. When they remembered a dream after waking up, they regarded it as either a favorable or hostile manifestation by higher powers, demonic and divine. When modes of thought belonging to natural science began to flourish, all this ingenious mythology was transformed into psychology, and today only a small minority of educated people doubt that dreams are a product of the dreamer's own mind." (Chapter 1, p. 5)

"There seemed, therefore, good grounds for hoping that a method of investigation which had given satisfactory results in the case of pyschopathic structures would also be of use in throwing light upon dreams. Phobias and obsessions are as alien to normal consciousness as dreams are to waking consciousness." (Chapter 2, p. 8)

"Moreover, an examination of these dreams offers advantages from another standpoint. For children's dreams...