If you like to boast that you never dream, then maybe you are realistic and full of common sense. But, said Dr. Alfred Adler, psychologist, at the Academy of Music last night, it might be because you're feeble-minded.
For neither the feebleminded nor the realistic are given to dreaming much. The realistic because he puts fancies from him in sleep as in life; the feebleminded because he is incapable of dreaming, which is a creative function.
If you dream regularly, Dr. Adler said, it is because you are creative and given to fantasy, or because you like to fool yourself.
"Our dreams depend on the kind of life we are living," Dr. Adler said. "Different people can dream of the same things, but the meaning will differ for each person.
"That is why mass interpretations of dreams cannot be true, nor can mailed interpretations of dreams mean anything. You must understand the person to understand his dream.
"Especially you must understand the experiences he is undergoing at the time and his emotions about them, for dreams are in symbolic and metaphorical form the expressions of emotion of our present experiences."
The most common dreams, Dr. Adler said, are dreams of falling, of flying, of climbing and of being caught in a crowd with insufficient clothing. The latter dream was explained as usually caused by a feeling of unsureness or of inadequacy of one's self.
Fuente: "Are You Creative or Foolish? Asks Adler in Talk on Dreams", Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, N. Y., Friday, 27 October 1933, top of the page, cols. 3-5; unsigned; the page number is cut off in the copy. The lecture was one of the series of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences at the Academy of Music. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (Brooklyn NY Daily Eagle 1933 a Grayscale, file 1708); the OCR agrees with the image. Neighbouring items on the page omitted.