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In 1911, writing on “Dreams in Folklore”, Freud stated: “It is very much more convenient to study dream-symbolism in folklore than in actual dreams. Dreams are obliged to conceal things and only surrender their secrets to interpretation; these comic anecdotes, however, which are disguised as dreams, are intended as communications, meant to give pleasure to the person who tells them as well as to the listener, and therefore the interpretation is added quite unashamedly to the symbol. These stories delight in stripping off the veiling symbols” (Freud 1911, p. 181). In “On the History of Psychoanalytic Movement”, Freud (1914) summarized: “…about the interpretation of dreams. It came as the first-fruits of the technical innovation I had adopted when, following a dim presentiment, I decided to replace hypnosis by free association… Since this was how the discovery came about, it followed that the symbolism in the language of dreams was almost the last thing to become accessible to me…Later on I found the essential characteristic and most important part of my dream theory—the derivation of dream-distortion from an internal conflict…patients' dreams …might be regarded as analogues of their symptoms…” (1914, pp. 19-20). In “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis”, Freud (1916-1917) noted that “what is symbolically represented in dreams involves “the human body as a whole, parents, children, brothers and sisters, birth, death, nakedness and …something else besides” (p. 153). In the same text Freud refers to the limitations of the concept and its definition, and issued a cautionary statement: “We must admit, too, that the concept of a symbol cannot at present be sharply delimited: it shades off into such notions as those of a replacement or representation and even approaches that of an allusion. With a number of symbols, the comparison which underlies them is obvious. But again, there are other symbols in regard to which we must ask ourselves where we are to look for the common element, the tertium comparationis , of the supposed comparisons. On further reflection we may afterwards discover it or it may definitely remain concealed. It is strange, moreover, that if a symbol is a comparison, it should not be brought to light by an association, and that the dreamer should not be acquainted with it but should make use of it without knowing about it: more than that, indeed, that the dreamer feels no inclination to acknowledge the comparison even after it has been pointed out to him” (Freud 1916, p. 152, original italics). In “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud 1920), Freud described his 18 months old grandson's game with the cotton-reel as example of an early symbolic expression and an attempt at mastery of a complex psychic state. This symbolic play-enactment of the disappearance and return of his mother was accompanied by early stages in the development of language, of mental representations and of symbolic activity, which all worked together to enable the child to express something of his inner world in a form that conveyed meaning and could be understood by those who knew him. Although not primarily intended for communication, later theorists (Neubauer 1990; Piaget 1936; Lacan 1966; Winnicott 1953;
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