IN HER interview with J. Allan Hobson (“Dream doctor,’’ Ideas, April 3) regarding his attempts to challenge Sigmund Freud on the nature of dream life, Lisa Birk correctly states that “dreams’ emotional content can be a window into our own makeup.’’ That observation is not new, and it was brilliantly demonstrated by Freud in 1899 in his classic opus, “The Interpretation of Dreams.’’
Dreams can provide individuals with a window into how their minds work. A person once related a dream to me about being in a room with jalousie blinds on all the windows. In recounting the dream, he was startled to realize that he himself had jealous feelings and had been blind to them. It was a pivotal experience brought to awareness by recounting a dream.
Hobson does us a favor in reminding us of basic truths about how dream life can be put to use. But why is he also so busy trying to “chop off the head of the snake’’ by undercutting Freud? Let dreamers decide what individual dreams signify to them.
Dr. Michael I. Good
Chestnut Hill
The writer is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is affiliated with the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East.
