Dr. Frederick Peterson, in a recent article,2 censures Freud's theories very severely. The attempt to trace every dream to the fulfilment of a wish he regards as "a kind of harking back in a very crude way to the philosophical speculations on the world as will and presentation of such men as Berkeley, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. If there is one clear fact in the psychology of our daily life it is that the essential function of the mind is its ability to deal with the future. It is anticipation of the future that guides our conduct, plans for us, chooses, distinguishes the right paths that we are to follow, and the ways that are favourable to progress from those that are unfavourable. Our memories are our experience on which we base our life to be; the present is a point, the future is everything. This is especially true of youth, which is fullest of anticipation of the future, a long preparation for all that is in store. Hence our minds are always full of anticipations in our waking life - hopes, desires, wishes, plans, ambitions, aspirations, as well as fears, timidity, anxiety, dread, suspense. Naturally our dreams, which are a sort of ungoverned replica of waking thought, but with a wider horizon of memories, reflect in a moonlight kind of way, the thinking processes of our day. These anticipations come to us in our dreams. Sometimes they are pleasant; sometimes anxious and apprehensive." Further, Peterson claims that there are no symbols in dream life which were not present in the dreamer's conscious life, and that the elaborate symbolism of the Freudians is wholly their invention. Such things as distortion, displacement, etc., he regards as artifices employed to make a dream, easily explicable by study of the normal anticipations of the mind, fulfil a wish.

1 Clinical Manual of Mental Diseases, 1918, p. 389 et seq, Saunders Co. 2 Journal American Medical Assn., Dec. 6, 1919, p. 1740.

Still another objector to Freud's theories is Dr. Meyer Solomon. Regarding the Freudian views of dreams he says:1 "It is here that the Freudians have found most of the mental mechanisms of man best illustrated. And it is here that they have frequently used symbolism, analogy, ingenuity and imaginative, highly improbable and even impossible, explanations for the analysis of the content, the psychologic mechanisms and the interpretation of many of the mental processes." According to Solomon, dreams are but continuations of our waking mental life, though they are not as logical, orderly, reasoned, owing to the lessened activity of clear, critical consciousness. Our wishes and our fears, offsprings of our instincts, are associated with indifferent scenes and experiences, and are the basic foundations of dreams. Our instincts are chiefly two, - the instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of race propagation. Based on these, we have the instinct for food, shelter, clothing, play, defence; the marital, the paternal, the maternal, the filial, the moral, social, and altruistic instincts. These guide our conduct, our feelings, desires, thoughts, in the waking as well as the sleeping state. They exist in all of us in varying degrees. During sleep, certain ideas resulting from association, also from somatic and external peripheral stimuli, may appeal to certain instincts, and determine the direction and content of the dream. For example, peculiar sensations of the skin, and viscera, dyspnea, etc., may appeal to the instinct of self-preservation, and lead to a dream of impending death, hanging, choking, etc. Not only are dreams not essentially founded on childhood experiences, or sexuality, but they do not depend upon symbolism greatly, nor is symbolism present in all dreams. Dreams are important, however, as a means of search for truth and knowledge, for removing certain superstitions regarding their significance, for the discovery of the underlying cause of certain nervous and mental states.

1 A Contribution to the Analysis and Interpretation of Dreams Bated on the Motive of Self-Preservation, Amer. Jour. Insanity, July, 1914, p. 82; see also, Interpretation of Dreams Based on Various Motives, International Clinics, Vol. 4, 23rd Series, J. B. Lippincott Co.; Analysis and Interpretation of Dreams Based on Various Motives, Jour. Abnormal Psychology, June-July, 1913.

Many other prominent psychologists have dissented from the acceptation of Freud's views in toto; naturally, their arguments are answered by the Freudians. While the opponents of psycho-analysis have not entirely disproved the dogmas on which it is founded and practised, they have, at least, demonstrated that it is necessary for the Freudians to be more general, less one-sided in their ideas, both as regards the etiologic factors in the neuroses and the mechanism of dreams. It would hardly profit us to go into the controversy further; all we desire to point out here is that dreams often fulfill wishes; should the few examples already given not suffice, the reader may discover the truth or falsity of the statement by studying his own dreams, and the dreams of young children particularly.