apply to the entire theory. We have

apply to the entire theory. We have clearly not shown, as Freud at points tried
to, that the analysis of each single dream can provide a foundation for the
entire dream theory. What we have shown is that the meanings that are discovered through the application of the psychoanalytic method to the dream are as
true as are the meanings that are derived from the application of that method
to our wakeful expressions; that the psychoanalytic theory of dreams is as valid
as the broader edifice of psychoanalytic theory. This is quite a lot. Modern
epistemology has taught us that to be respectably justified one may, and
inevitably does, rely on the broader framework of thought within which one is
working. One does not find anew the foundations of thought through the
analysis of each particular instance. This is the basis of the Holistic approach to
justification. Although this approach recognizes the influence of our theoretical
constructions on how we perceive and formulate new domains, it is a far cry
from the hermeneuticist approach that has emerged in psychoanalysis that
maintains that in psychoanalysis there is no objective evidence because all is
tainted by the subject’s perspective and all theories are preferred narratives
(chapter 1). The careful argumentation on the basis of detailed study of the
evidence that went into the present study makes evident the fundamental dif-
ference between the approaches.

The bottom line here is that if one rejects the validity of the entire edifice
of psychoanalytic theory, then one should also reject the psychoanalytic dream
theory. However, if one considers the psychoanalytic theory to be well founded,
then the dream theory should also be considered to be well founded. This is not
because the dream theory has been proven independently of the broader theory,
nor is it because of some arbitrary expansion of the theory in order to include a
range of new assumptions that underlie the dream theory. Rather it is because
the dream theory meshes well with the assumptions and networks of ideas that
underlie the broader theory. This could have not been the case. The dream
theory could have failed to interact well with the broader psychoanalytic theory.
In fact, from our perspective it almost failed. We almost had to conclude that
the psychoanalytic theory of dreams was without foundation. It was only
through the delineation and explication of the specific nature of the “experien-
tial quality of meaningfulness”—an experience previously neglected in the scien—
tific literature—that psychoanalysis’s general assumptions could be legitimately
applied to the dream and the foundation for the theory found.