Review - Prince - "Subconscious Intelligence Underlying Dreams"

 Summary of Morton Prince “Subconscious Intelligence Underlying Dreams”

“Subconscious Intelligence Underlying Dreams” is Morton Prince’s theories pertaining to dreams and the symbolization of subconscious thought into conscious ideas.   Prince begins the essay by summarizing Sigmund Freud’s theory of the two processes in dreams; “one is the conscious dream, the other is a subconscious process which is the actuated residuum of a previous experience and determines the dream” (212).   Morton furthers Freud’s notions by exploring how subconscious ideas are transferred to conscious dream thought (212).   He surmises that elements of subconscious thought are symbols that emerge as “secondary images” (213).  These images are then translated into ideas the dreamer can articulate.  Prince is suggesting that dreamers receive a primary message from the subconscious in the form visual imagery.  Additional dream images, or secondary images, develop further narrative through the symbolic language of the subconscious.      

Prince recounts the experience of a subject who awoke to strong emotive thoughts (213).  The subject recorded her vision, and found later that the words and language she used were different from what she had remembered writing (214).   Prince notes the subject meant to record what she saw, but wrote what she felt from the dream (214).  He also notes the subject was unable to account for the composition (214). Prince writes that well composed and emotive writing are commonalities with people having visionary experiences from dreams (215).

Prince states that the same processes that form dreams are the same processes that express the ideas as verbal symbolism (215).  He refers to the process that produces both visual and verbal symbolism as coconscious (215).  He writes that he was able to trace the dreamer’s thoughts to antecedent experiences that become the causal factors for dream-vision, waking-vision, and poetical expression (215). 

Prince restates that dream vision, waking vision and poetical expressions are subconscious processes that act in the same manner (216).  He also writes, “As this process showed itself capable of poetical composition, constructive imagination, volition, memory, and affectivity it was a sub-conscious intelligence” (216).  A summary of Prince’s essay demonstrates the act of people writing to emotion, caused by dreams, rather than to conscious language.  The nature of the writing is more reflective of the sub-conscious rather than the conscious.  Further, Prince argues that the subconscious has an intelligence all its own, and it is based in symbolic imagery.  The thrust of Prince’s essay explains one process that interprets and produces both verbal and visual symbolic imagery.  These processes allow the subconscious intelligence to effectively speak to conscious dream thought.

Works Cited

Prince, Morton. “Subconscious Intelligence Underlying Dreams.” The Creative Process: A Symposium. Ed. Brewster Ghislen. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1985. 212-216. Print.