Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.
The psychological context of dream-contents consists in the web of associations in which the dream is naturally embedded. Theoretically we can never know anything in advance about this web, but in practice it is sometimes possible, granted long enough experience. Even so, careful analysis will never rely too much on technical rules; the danger of deception and suggestion is too great. In the analysis of isolated dreams above all, this kind of knowing in advance and making assumptions on the grounds of practical expectation or general probability is positively wrong. It should therefore be an absolute rule to assume that every dream, and every part of a dream, is unknown at the outset, and to attempt an interpretation only after carefully taking up the context. We can then apply the meaning we have thus discovered to the text of the dream itself and see whether this yields a fluent reading, or rather whether a satisfying meaning emerges.
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.
Our minds have the need to “know.” When we don’t know, we make assumptions - they make us feel safer than not knowing. And we are pretty much always making assumptions. We assume that we know how someone is going to react to us. We assume that our efforts will or will not be successful. And not only do we believe our assumptions about what other people are thinking, but then we end up taking those assumptions personally and even end up resenting the person. To avoid assumptions, ask questions. It takes courage to trust the present moment, to allow other people to be exactly who they are, and to let life unfold according to its own plan… and it avoids a great deal of suffering.
Books about Assumptions
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