La psychologie des rêves dans « Martha Gardner » (1837) de William Austin

In his last short story, « Martha Gardner; or Moral Reaction, » William Austin (1778-1841) produced an insightful interpretation of his heroine's dream which retrospectively seems to anticipate the psychoanalytical theory of the formation of oneiric fantasies. A Freudian analysis confirms that the Bostonian writer cleverly succeeded in mixing in his tale the requirements of basic Unitarian propaganda — much in fashion in early nine-teenth-century Boston — with a subtle psychologically-oriented plot.