For thousands of years people have made many attempts to interpret dreams, but these attempts took on no reliable scientific character until about fifty years ago. The layer of the foundations of this science is Freud, in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, where he lifted the veil from the scientific means by which we can analyze our strange dreams.

The theory Freud took as the basis of his studies is that dreams are a fulfillment of our inner desires: in our sleep we try to realize the desires and wishes with which our imagination seethes during our waking hours. To illustrate this theory he gives the example of a schoolboy whose mother wakes him every morning to get up for school. One morning sleep was very sweet, and it was hard for the boy to leave his bed, so he dreamed that he was at school, and therefore answered his mother with his eyes still shut: "Let me sleep on — I am already at school!"

The fulfillment of the wish to stay in bed is plain in this dream.

There are those who see in their dream that they are traveling and that the train got away from them at the last moment. Dreams like these mean the facing of an important problem, and are not to be read as the failure of that problem, so long as the dreamer is certain, in his subconscious mind, that other trains will follow this one, in which he can travel.

Frightening, terrifying dreams are an ordinary thing with many people — as when a savage beast pursues a man, robbing him of his rest and drying the blood in his veins. Freud says that these dreams express a suppressed longing and an insistent desire perceived only by the subconscious mind.

There is a group of scientists who believe that dreams are true pictures of our inner selves, and this is the substance of what they have concluded:

1 - Our dreams disclose our inner nature and our secrets, and show us the hidden intentions,

desires, and wishes that surge in our breasts.

2 - In our dreams we try to solve our problems and the psychologi-cal knots that wound our pride.

3 - It is not easy to understand our dreams, because we are not yet accustomed to thinking in this direction; for the most part we prefer not to face the real problems that our dreams stir up.

4 - We are able to understand our own dreams, if we have the desire, the patience, and the courage for it —

and that is by treating our personal affairs and our private problems with the utmost sin-cerity. The truth is that in our dreams we are braver, and nearer to our real selves, than in our thinking while awake.

As for the dreams that carry us off on the wing of the wind, so that we soar through the air — they may point back to sweet childhood memories and high swings... and they are also a sign of a feeling of lowliness, or of an unbridled sexual emotion.

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