Proof in a dream: what does it mean?
A trial copy made to be corrected, which is the only version of a text where being wrong is the point.
How do the four traditions read it?
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream. The four often disagree, and that is the point: a symbol rarely means one fixed thing, and the distance between Freud, Jung, modern research and myth tells you more than any single verdict could.
How did Freud read this symbol?
Freud would attend to the permission to be wrong. One version exists solely to have its faults found, and he would ask where in the dreamer's work mistakes were welcome.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.How did Jung read this symbol?
A Jungian reading might note what always survives it. Errors are found on the proof and errors are found after printing, every time, which is why the errata slip exists as a standard object.
Our summary of a Jungian reading, in our own words, not Jung's. See Jung, ed., Man and His Symbols (1964).What does modern dream research say?
Mistakes and their discovery appear in dream reports, and the typical-dreams literature records being unprepared or found wanting among common themes.
Our summary of the typical-dreams literature. See Nielsen et al., Dreaming 13(4), 2003, 211-235.What do myth and folklore say?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, meaning the test rather than the demonstration, which is the older sense of the word and the one printing kept.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Brewer).How can writers use this symbol?
The same symbol, read as craft material rather than as a dream. What it does on the page, how genres use it differently, and what happens when you turn it inside out. Written for novelists, screenwriters and poets who need the symbol to actually work, and it ends with something to try.
Where does this appear in literature?
It is the one version of a text where being wrong is the entire purpose of its existence.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis. Our own words; no quoted text.What does it do in a story?
A copy made in order to be marked.
What are the genre conventions?
A page with red in the margins.
How to subvert it
Write the proof that is perfect.
Try this
Two hundred words about a version that exists to be corrected.
Only the first of these names a source. What a symbol does in a story, how genres treat it, how to invert it and what to try are our editorial judgement as writers and editors, not findings from a body of research. They are offered as craft opinion and should be argued with.
The books behind these readings
These are the books this entry actually draws on, not a general reading list. Where a text is in the public domain we link the free copy first, because you should not have to pay for something you can read for nothing. Every edition listed has been checked to exist and to be the right one.
-
The Interpretation of Dreams
The source behind every Freud reading in the dictionary. This is the 1913 Brill translation we adapt from, and it is free to read online.
-
Man and His Symbols
The accessible Jung, and the honest place to start for the archetype material our Jung readings summarise.
Rosmerta Publishing is a member of the Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates affiliate programs. If you buy a book through these links we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. The public-domain texts are always free to read online.