As a student of the works of Freud and his followers I fully realise the nature of the various interpretations - most of them unpleasant - which may be read into this dream, the repressed thoughts and complexes to which it may be attributed. The explanation of it that I believe to be a true and sufficient one is of a simpler nature. To me the dream relates to a mood which is familiar to all of us as the years pass and as age comes nearer to us, a mood when we gaze tenderly, but a little wistfully, at the grace and youth of a new generation. I am very content; I sit happily with my books, and I watch with delight the young flying figures that are playing tennis on the lawn, or dancing, but the pleasure is accompanied sometimes with a little sigh of remembrance, for it was very good once upon a time to be young, and in my dream I am young again.

The dream that is recorded on page 163, Chapter XIII, is used there as an illustration of the working of the two factors of our dual consciousness in a dream, and has its place in the argument of that chapter. It may be referred to here from another point of view. In this dream; certain household possessions, some silk curtains and pieces of brocade had been found out of doors upon the ground, soiled by rain and melting snow. I was distressed by their condition and absorbed in the care of getting them dried and cleaned. I took part in the dream in a dual capacity - (1) as the "dreamer" who found the things in the snow and was busied in restoring them, and (2) as an outsider, a critic, who argued with the dreamer, questioning the reality of the worry that was so oppressive, and insisting that the trouble was only "dream trouble".

It was suggested to me by one who has brought his great knowledge of psychology to the science of healing, to whom I had been allowed to send some of my dream notes, that I had not dwelt upon the symbolisms in dreams, or laid sufficient stress on this aspect of them. He wrote: "Tour dream of the brocade and silk curtains strongly suggests to me a symbolism and reference to some mental experience (repressed thoughts, etc.) of your inner life. I would not pretend to guess what these were, but will leave you to your own psycho-analysis, which might show what 'soiled' thoughts you may have had. I feel quite sure that symbolisms do occur, for I have observed in my subjects such obvious ones that they needed no psycho-analysis. However, to hold that all dreams are symbolic, as Freud does, is to me absurd".

My own analysis of the dream suggests to me a different symbolism which, although a simple one, accounts, I think, for the mental disturbance that the dream represented.

Some time previously the old country house in which I live had come to me by inheritance. I have always looked on myself as caretaker or guardian of it and of its contents. Difficulties arising from wartime conditions in giving adequate care to these, and the need for special precautions as to insurance, etc., were often in my mind. I am convinced that these anxieties were symbolised in the dreams, and that they are the explanation of the "dream trouble" which obsessed me.

Belief in a symbolic and prophetic significance attaching to dreams is revealed in some form or other in the religions and early literature of all races. Dreams filled a great place in the beliefs and traditions of primitive peoples: the strangeness of the dream life, so like and yet so unlike the normal life of man, seems to have haunted his thoughts from the beginning of time. The Hebrew people were in no way singular in looking on dreams as allegorical in character and as the channel through which divinely inspired messages and warnings were conveyed to men, and in setting a high value on the gifts of those who seemed able to interpret their hidden meanings. Underlying these beliefs there was always the conviction that in sleep or in the transition time between sleeping and waking the mind is especially sensitive to influences external to itself, and lends itself readily as a medium of communication with the unseen.

From the dawn of history down to the present day these beliefs have appeared and reappeared, and would seem to be deeply rooted in the minds of men, since they have survived all changes in men's faiths. In a primitive form they linger on to this day. Fragments of the old soothsayer's lore are still to be found in our villages, and the wise woman can tell you, if she will, what your dream of last night portends. In these interpretations the event foreshadowed is generally in sharp contrast to the thing dreamed of. "Dream of joy, and wake to sorrow," and "Dream of frost, and dread fire," are samples of a dream lore that has the weight of long tradition in our countryside. It cannot be only amongst primitive countryfolk that interest and belief in the significance of dreams are still to be found, for a book purporting to give the meanings of two thousand four hundred dreams lies before me. If its contents prove disappointing to the seeker after enlightenment, in quantity at least it leaves nothing to be desired; few of us, however active our dream life may be, could ask for more.

The old conceptions about dreams and their prophetic significance are probably to be found nowadays only among the uneducated; but for centuries the same beliefs were part of the general creed, accepted alike by the simple and the learned; and it was only in later times, when scientific knowledge had advanced and reasoning had become more critical, that the old unquestioning acceptance of such traditions gave way, and there sprang up among educated men a profound distrust of everything that savoured of superstitions from which they had but lately freed themselves. Their distrust was indeed so great that the dread of superstition became at times as unreasoning as the older dread of heresy. And so it came about that, because dreams had formerly been looked upon as a recognised part of the supernatural machinery of the world, any discussion of the phenomena of dreaming was vetoed and their study condemned, lest superstition should again lift up its head or have any say with regard to them. But generations come and go, and with each generation the point of view alters. Now once more philosophers are occupied with the problem of the significance of dreams.

The study of dreams is their especial province, and, whilst we pay all due honour to their difficult researches in the field of the unconscious, it is not too much to say that some of their subtle dream interpretations seem to ask for as great a measure of faith on the part of the unlearned as was ever demanded by the interpreters of old.