ShmoopTube

00:04

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by pre-scientific days. Sadly, a time of high

00:09

unemployment for scientists.

00:41

According to Freud, how were dreams understood in what he refers to as the "prescientific days"?

00:53

To answer this one, all we have to do is go back to the first few lines of the passage. Check it out:

00:58

So what Freud is explicitly saying is that in "prescientific" days or the "days

01:04

before science," societies tended to explain dreams as divine or supernatural manifestations.

01:09

In other words, they thought dreams were messages from the gods. Now, all we have to do... is

01:14

isolate the answer that agrees with Freud.

01:17

If people thought that dreams were coming from the honest-to-god gods, then it's unlikely

01:21

that they'd think they were meaningless.

01:24

Answer (D) is incorrect.

01:25

If a person thinks their god is communicating with him or her, it's probably best not

01:29

to say its divine messages are "ridiculous," or absurd. There might be consequences.

01:34

(C) is off the list.

01:37

Freud does say that ancient people believed that sometimes dreams came from "demonical,"

01:42

or evil forces. So they weren't necessarily always good things.

01:46

He doesn't say that people from pre-scientific times believed that dreams themselves were

01:50

symptoms of illness, though. Therefore, we can eliminate answer (B).

01:54

Choice (A) correctly restates Freud's point about the take on dreams before the reign

01:59

of science, making it the right answer.

02:01

Wonder if Freud was ever... California Dreamin' on such a winter's day...

Full Transcript