Interpretation of Dreams E-book
Author: Sigmund Freud
Genre: Biology / Medicine, Science
1900
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
by Sigmund Freud
translated by A. A. Brill
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION
-
WHEREAS there was a space of nine years between the first and second
editions of this book, the need of a third edition was apparent when
little more than a year had elapsed. I ought to be gratified by this
change; but if I was unwilling previously to attribute the neglect
of my work to its small value, I cannot take the interest which is now
making its appearance as proof of its quality.
The advance of scientific knowledge has not left The
Interpretation of Dreams untouched. When I wrote this book in 1899
there was as yet no "sexual theory," and the analysis of the more
complicated forms of the psychoneuroses was still in its infancy.
The interpretation of dreams was intended as an expedient to
facilitate the psychological analysis of the neuroses; but since
then a profounder understanding of the neuroses has contributed
towards the comprehension of the dream. The doctrine of
dream-interpretation itself has evolved in a direction which was
insufficiently emphasized in the first edition of this book. From my
own experience, and the works of Stekel and other writers, * I have
since learned to appreciate more accurately the significance of
symbolism in dreams (or rather, in unconscious thought). In the course
of years, a mass of data has accumulated which demands
consideration. I have endeavored to deal with these innovations by
interpolations in the text and footnotes. If these additions do not
always quite adjust themselves to the framework of the treatise, or if
the earlier text does not everywhere come up to the standard of our
present knowledge, I must beg indulgence for this deficiency, since it
is only the result and indication of the increasingly rapid advance of
our science. I will even venture to predict the directions in which
further editions of this book- should there be a demand for them-
may diverge from previous editions. Dream-interpretation must seek a
closer union with the rich material of poetry, myth, and popular
idiom, and it must deal more faithfully than has hitherto been
possible with the relations of dreams to the neuroses and to mental
derangement.
Herr Otto Rank has afforded me valuable assistance in the
selection of supplementary examples, and has revised the proofs of
this edition. I have to thank him and many other colleagues for
their contributions and corrections.
Vienna, 1911
-
* Omitted in subsequent editions.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) EDITION
-
THAT there should have been a demand for a second edition of this
book- a book which cannot be described as easy to read- before the
completion of its first decade is not to be explained by the
interest of the professional circles to which I was addressing myself.
My psychiatric colleagues have not, apparently, attempted to look
beyond the astonishment which may at first have been aroused by my
novel conception of the dream; and the professional philosophers,
who are anyhow accustomed to disposing of the dream in a few
sentences- mostly the same- as a supplement to the states of
consciousness, have evidently failed to realize that precisely in this
connection it was possible to make all manner of deductions, such as
must lead to a fundamental modification of our psychological
doctrines. The attitude of the scientific reviewers was such to lead
me to expect that the fate of the book would be to fall into oblivion;
and the little flock of faithful adherents, who follow my lead in
the therapeutic application of psycho-analysis, and interpret dreams
by my method, could not have exhausted the first edition of this book.
I feel, therefore, that my thanks are due to the wider circle of
cultured and inquiring readers whose sympathy has induced me, after
the lapse of nine years, once more to take up this difficult work,
which has so many fundamental bearings.
I am glad to be able to say that I found little in the book that
called for alteration. Here and there I have interpolated fresh
material, or have added opinions based on more extensive experience,
or I have sought to elaborate individual points; but the essential
passages treating of dreams and their interpretation, and the
psychological doctrines to be deduced therefrom, have been left
unaltered; subjectively, at all events, they have stood the test of
time. Those who are acquainted with my other writings (on the
aetiology and mechanism of the psychoneuroses) will know that I
never offer unfinished work as finished, and that I have always
endeavoured to revise my conclusions in accordance with my maturing
opinions; but as regards the subject of the dream-life, I am able to
stand by my original text. In my many years' work upon the problems of
the neuroses I have often hesitated, and I have often gone astray; and
then it was always the interpretation of dreams that restored my
self-confidence. My many scientific opponents are actuated by a wise
instinct when they decline to follow me into the region of oneirology.
Even the material of this book, even my own dreams, defaced by
time or superseded, by means of which I have demonstrated the rules of
dream-interpretation, revealed, when I came to revise these pages, a
continuity that resisted revision. For me, of course, this book has an
additional subjective significance, which I did not understand until
after its completion. It reveals itself to me as a piece of my
self-analysis, as my reaction to the death of my father, that is, to
the most important event, the most poignant loss in a man's life. Once
I had realized this, I felt that I could not obliterate the traces
of this influence. But to my readers the material from which they
learn to evaluate and interpret dreams will be a matter of
indifference.
Where an inevitable comment could not be fitted into the old
context, I have indicated by square brackets that it does not occur in
the first edition. *
Berchtesgaden, 1908
-
* Omitted in subsequent editions.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
-
IN this volume I have attempted to expound the methods and results
of dream-interpretation; and in so doing I do not think I have
overstepped the boundary of neuro-pathological science. For the
dream proves on psychological investigation to be the first of a
series of abnormal psychic formations, a series whose succeeding
members- the hysterical phobias, the obsessions, the delusions-
must, for practical reasons, claim the attention of the physician. The
dream, as we shall see, has no title to such practical importance, but
for that very reason its theoretical value as a typical formation is
all the greater, and the physician who cannot explain the origin of
dream-images will strive in vain to understand the phobias and the
obsessive and delusional ideas, or to influence them by therapeutic
methods.
But the very context to which our subject owes its importance must
be held responsible for the deficiencies of the following chapters.
The abundant lacunae in this exposition represent so many points of
contact at which the problem of dream-formation is linked up with
the more comprehensive problems of psycho-pathology; problems which
cannot be treated in these pages, but which, if time and powers
suffice and if further material presents itself, may be elaborated
elsewhere.
The peculiar nature of the material employed to exemplify the
interpretation of dreams has made the writing even of this treatise
a difficult task. Consideration of the methods of dream-interpretation
will show why the dreams recorded in the literature on the subject, or
those collected by persons unknown to me, were useless for my purpose;
I had only the choice between my own dreams and those of the
patients whom I was treating by psychoanalytic methods. But this later
material was inadmissible, since the dream-processes were
undesirably complicated by the intervention of neurotic characters.
And if I relate my own dreams I must inevitably reveal to the gaze
of strangers more of the intimacies of my psychic life than is
agreeable to me, and more than seems fitting in a writer who is not
a poet but a scientific investigator. To do so is painful, but
unavoidable; I have submitted to the necessity, for otherwise I
could not have demonstrated my psychological conclusions. Sometimes,
of course, I could not resist the temptation to mitigate my
indiscretions by omissions and substitutions; but wherever I have done
so the value of the example cited has been very definitely diminished.
I can only express the hope that my readers will understand my
difficult position, and will be indulgent; and further, that all those
persons who are in any way concerned in the dreams recorded will not
seek to forbid our dream-life at all events to exercise freedom of
thought!
I. THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF DREAM-PROBLEMS (UP TO 1900)
-
IN the following pages I shall demonstrate that there is a
psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams,
and that on the application of this technique every dream will
reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance,
and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic
activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to
elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity
of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the
psychic forces whose conflict or cooperation is responsible for our
dreams. This done, my investigation will terminate, as it will have
reached the point where the problem of the dream merges into more
comprehensive problems, and to solve these we must have recourse to
material of a different kind.
I shall begin by giving a short account of the views of earlier
writers on this subject, and of the status of the dream-problem in
contemporary science; since in the course of this treatise I shall not
often have occasion to refer to either. In spite of thousands of years
of endeavour, little progress has been made in the scientific
understanding of dreams. This fact has been so universally
acknowledged by previous writers on the subject that it seems hardly
necessary to quote individual opinions. The reader will find, in the
works listed at the end of this work, many stimulating observations,
and plenty of interesting material relating to our subject, but little
or nothing that concerns the true nature of the dream, or that
solves definitely any of its enigmas. The educated layman, of
course, knows even less of the matter.
The conception of the dream that was held in prehistoric ages by
primitive peoples, and the influence which it may have exerted on
the formation of their conceptions of the universe, and of the soul,
is a theme of such great interest that it is only with reluctance that
I refrain from dealing with it in these pages. I will refer the reader
to the well-known works of Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Herbert
Spencer, E. B. Tylor, and other writers; I will only add that we shall
not realize the importance of these problems and speculations until we
have completed the task of dream-interpretation that lies before us.
A reminiscence of the concept of the dream that was held in
primitive times seems to underlie the evaluation of the dream which
was current among the peoples of classical antiquity. * They took it
for granted that dreams were related to the world of the
supernatural beings in whom they believed, and that they brought
inspirations from the gods and demons. Moreover, it appeared to them
that dreams must serve a special purpose in respect of the dreamer;
that, as a rule, they predicted the future. The extraordinary
variations in the content of dreams, and in the impressions which they
produced on the dreamer, made it, of course, very difficult to
formulate a coherent conception of them, and necessitated manifold
differentiations and group-formations, according to their value and
reliability. The valuation of dreams by the individual philosophers of
antiquity naturally depended on the importance which they were
prepared to attribute to manticism in general.
-
* The following remarks are based on Buchsenschutz's careful
essay, Traum und Traumdeutung im Altertum (Berlin 1868).
-
In the two works of Aristotle in which there is mention of dreams,
they are already regarded as constituting a problem of psychology.
We are told that the dream is not god-sent, that it is not of divine
but of demonic origin. For nature is really demonic, not divine;
that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is
subject to the laws of the human spirit, which has, of course, a
kinship with the divine. The dream is defined as the psychic
activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep. Aristotle was
acquainted with some of the characteristics of the dream-life; for
example, he knew that a dream converts the slight sensations perceived
in sleep into intense sensations ("one imagines that one is walking
through fire, and feels hot, if this or that part of the body
becomes only quite slightly warm"), which led him to conclude that
dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of
an incipient physical change which escaped observation during the
day. *
-
* The relationship between dreams and disease is discussed by
Hippocrates in a chapter of his famous work.
-
As has been said, those writers of antiquity who preceded
Aristotle did not regard the dream as a product of the dreaming
psyche, but as an inspiration of divine origin, and in ancient times
the two opposing tendencies which we shall find throughout the ages in
respect of the evaluation of the dream-life were already
perceptible. The ancients distinguished between the true and
valuable dreams which were sent to the dreamer as warnings, or to
foretell future events, and the vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams
whose object was to misguide him or lead him to destruction.
Gruppe * speaks of such a classification of dreams, citing Macrobius
and Artemidorus: "Dreams were divided into two classes; the first
class was believed to be influenced only by the present (or the past),
and was unimportant in respect of the future; it included the
enuknia (insomnia), which directly reproduce a given idea or its
opposite; e.g., hunger or its satiation; and the phantasmata, which
elaborate the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare,
ephialtes. The second class of dreams, on the other hand, was
determinative of the future. To this belonged:
1. Direct prophecies received in the dream (chrematismos,
oraculum);
2. the foretelling of a future event (orama, visio);
3. the symbolic dream, which requires interpretation (oneiros,
somnium.)
This theory survived for many centuries."
-
* Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, p. 390.
-
Connected with these varying estimations of the dream was the
problem of "dream-interpretation." Dreams in general were expected
to yield important solutions, but not every dream was immediately
understood, and it was impossible to be sure that a certain
incomprehensible dream did not really foretell something of
importance, so that an effort was made to replace the incomprehensible
content of the dream by something that should be at once
comprehensible and significant. In later antiquity Artemidorus of
Daldis was regarded as the greatest authority on dream-interpretation.
His comprehensive works must serve to compensate us for the lost works
of a similar nature. * The pre-scientific conception of the dream
which obtained among the ancients was, of course, in perfect keeping
with their general conception of the universe, which was accustomed to
project as an external reality that which possessed reality only in
the life of the psyche. Further, it accounted for the main
impression made upon the waking life by the morning memory of the
dream; for in this memory the dream, as compared with the rest of
the psychic content, seems to be something alien, coming, as it
were, from another world. It would be an error to suppose that
theory of the supernatural origin of dreams lacks followers even in
our own times; for quite apart from pietistic and mystical writers-
who cling, as they are perfectly justified in doing, to the remnants
of the once predominant realm of the supernatural until these remnants
have been swept away by scientific explanation- we not infrequently
find that quite intelligent persons, who in other respects are
averse from anything of a romantic nature, go so far as to base
their religious belief in the existence and co-operation of superhuman
spiritual powers on the inexplicable nature of the phenomena of dreams
(Haffner). The validity ascribed to the dream-life by certain
schools of philosophy- for example, by the school of Schelling- is a
distinct reminiscence of the undisputed belief in the divinity of
dreams which prevailed in antiquity; and for some thinkers the
mantic or prophetic power of dreams is still a subject of debate. This
is due to the fact that the explanations attempted by psychology are
too inadequate to cope with the accumulated material, however strongly
the scientific thinker may feel that such superstitious doctrines
should be repudiated.
-
* For the later history of dream-interpretation in the Middle Ages
consult Diepgen, and the special investigations of M. Forster,
Gotthard, and others. The interpretation of dreams among the Jews
has been studied by Amoli, Amram, and Lowinger, and recently, with
reference to the psycho-analytic standpoint, by Lauer. Details of
the Arabic methods of dream-interpretation are furnished by Drexl,
F. Schwarz, and the missionary Tfinkdji. The interpretation of
dreams among the Japanese has been investigated by Miura and Iwaya,
among the Chinese by Secker, and among the Indians by Negelein.
-
To write strongly the history of our scientific knowledge of the
dream-problem is extremely difficult, because, valuable though this
knowledge may be in certain respects, no real progress in a definite
direction is as yet discernible. No real foundation of verified
results has hitherto been established on which future investigators
might continue to build. Every new author approaches the same problems
afresh, and from the very beginning. If I were to enumerate such
authors in chronological order, giving a survey of the opinions
which each has held concerning the problems of the dream, I should
be quite unable to draw a clear and complete picture of the present
state of our knowledge on the subject. I have therefore preferred to
base my method of treatment on themes rather than on authors, and in
attempting the solution of each problem of the dream I shall cite
the material found in the literature of the subject.
But as I have not succeeded in mastering the whole of this
literature- for it is widely dispersed, and interwoven with the
literature of other subjects- I must ask my readers to rest content
with my survey as it stands, provided that no fundamental fact or
important point of view has been overlooked.
Until recently most authors have been inclined to deal with the
subjects of sleep and dreams in conjunction, and together with these
they have commonly dealt with analogous conditions of a
psycho-pathological nature, and other dream-like phenomena, such as
hallucinations, visions, etc. In recent works, on the other hand,
there has been a tendency to keep more closely to the theme, and to
consider, as a special subject, the separate problems of the
dream-life. In this change I should like to perceive an expression
of the growing conviction that enlightenment and agreement in such
obscure matters may be attained only by a series of detailed
investigations. Such a detailed investigation, and one of a special
psychological nature, is expounded in these pages. I have had little
occasion to concern myself with the problem of sleep, as this is
essentially a physiological problem, although the changes in the
functional determination of the psychic apparatus should be included
in a description of the sleeping state. The literature of sleep will
therefore not be considered here.
A scientific interest in the phenomena of dreams as such leads us to
propound the following problems, which to a certain extent,
interdependent, merge into one another.
A. The Relation of the Dream to the Waking State
-
The naive judgment of the dreamer on waking assumes that the
dream- even if it does not come from another world- has at all
events transported the dreamer into another world. The old
physiologist, Burdach, to whom we are indebted for a careful and
discriminating description of the phenomena of dreams, expressed
this conviction in a frequently quoted passage (p. 474): "The waking
life, with its trials and joys, its pleasures and pains, is never
repeated; on the contrary, the dream aims at relieving us of these.
Even when our whole mind is filled with one subject, when our hearts
are rent by bitter grief, or when some task has been taxing our mental
capacity to the utmost, the dream either gives us something entirely
alien, or it selects for its combinations only a few elements of
reality; or it merely enters into the key of our mood, and
symbolizes reality." J. H. Fichte (I. 541) speaks in precisely the
same sense of supplementary dreams, calling them one of the secret,
self-healing benefits of the psyche. L. Strumpell expresses himself to
the same effect in his Natur und Entstehung der Traume, a study
which is deservedly held in high esteem. "He who dreams turns his back
upon the world of waking consciousness" (p. 16); "In the dream the
memory of the orderly content of waking consciousness and its normal
behaviour is almost entirely lost" (p. 17); "The almost complete and
unencumbered isolation of the psyche in the dream from the regular
normal content and course of the waking state..." (p. 19).
Yet the overwhelming majority of writers on the subject have adopted
the contrary view of the relation of the dream to waking life. Thus
Haffner (p. 19): "To begin with, the dream continues the waking
life. Our dreams always connect themselves with such ideas as have
shortly before been present in our consciousness. Careful
examination will nearly always detect a thread by which the dream
has linked itself to the experiences of the previous day." Weygandt
(p. 6) flatly contradicts the statement of Burdach. "For it may
often be observed, apparently indeed in the great majority of
dreams, that they lead us directly back into everyday life, instead of
releasing us from it." Maury (p. 56) expresses the same idea in a
concise formula: "Nous revons de ce que nous avons vu, dit, desire, ou
fait." * Jessen, in his Psychologie, published in 1855 (p. 530), is
rather more explicit: "The content of dreams is always more or less
determined by the personality, the age, sex, station in life,
education and habits, and by the events and experiences of the whole
past life of the individual."
-
* We dream of what we have seen, said, desired, or done.
-
The philosopher, I. G. E. Maas, adopts the most unequivocal attitude
in respect of this question (Uber die Leidenschaften, 1805):
"Experience corroborates our assertion that we dream most frequently
of those things toward which our warmest passions are directed. This
shows us that our passions must influence the generation of our
dreams. The ambitious man dreams of the laurels which he has won
(perhaps only in imagination), or has still to win, while the lover
occupies himself, in his dreams, with the object of his dearest
hopes.... All the sensual desires and loathings which slumber in the
heart, if they are stimulated by any cause, may combine with other
ideas and give rise to a dream; or these ideas may mingle in an
already existing dream." *
-
* Communicated by Winterstein to the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse.
-
The ancients entertained the same idea concerning the dependence
of the dream-content on life. I will quote Radestock (p. 139): "When
Xerxes, before his expedition against Greece, was dissuaded from his
resolution by good counsel, but was again and again incited by
dreams to undertake it, one of the old, rational dream-interpreters of
the Persians, Artabanus, told him, and very appropriately, that
dream-images for the most part contain that of which one has been
thinking in the waking state."
In the didactic poem of Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (IV.
962), there occurs this passage:
"Et quo quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret, aut quibus in
rebus multum sumus ante morati atque in ea ratione fuit contenta magis
mens, in somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire; causidici causas
agere et componere leges, induperatores pugnare ac proelia
obire,"... etc., etc. * Cicero (De Divinatione, II. LXVII) says, in
a similar strain, as does also Maury many centuries later:
"Maximeque 'reliquiae' rerum earum moventur in animis et agitantur, de
quibus vigilantes aut cogitavimus aut egimus." *(2)
-
* And whatever be the pursuit to which one clings with devotion,
whatever the things on which we have been occupied much in the past,
the mind being thus more intent upon that pursuit, it is generally the
same things that we seem to encounter in dreams; pleaders to plead
their cause and collate laws, generals to contend and engage battle.
*(2) And especially the "remnant" of our waking thoughts and deeds
move and stir within the soul.
-
The contradiction between these two views concerning the relation
between dream life and waking life seems indeed irresolvable. Here
we may usefully cite the opinion of F. W. Hildebrandt (1875), who held
that on the whole the peculiarities of the dream can only be described
as "a series of contrasts which apparently amount to contradictions"
(p. 8). "The first of these contrasts is formed by the strict
isolation or seclusion of the dream from true and actual life on the
one hand, and on the other hand by the continuous encroachment of
the one upon the other, and the constant dependence of the one upon
the other. The dream is something absolutely divorced from the reality
experienced during the waking state; one may call it an existence
hermetically sealed up and insulated from real life by an unbridgeable
chasm. It frees us from reality, blots out the normal recollection
of reality, and sets us in another world and a totally different life,
which fundamentally has nothing in common with real life...."
Hildebrandt then asserts that in falling asleep our whole being,
with its forms of existence, disappears "as through an invisible
trapdoor." In one's dream one is perhaps making a voyage to St. Helena
in order to offer the imprisoned Napoleon an exquisite vintage of
Moselle. One is most affably received by the ex-emperor, and one feels
almost sorry when, on waking, the interesting illusion is destroyed.
But let us now compare the situation existing in the dream with the
actual reality. The dreamer has never been a wine-merchant, and has no
desire to become one. He has never made a sea-voyage, and St. Helena
is the last place in the world that he would choose as the destination
of such a voyage. The dreamer feels no sympathy for Napoleon, but on
the contrary a strong patriotic aversion. And lastly, the dreamer
was not yet among the living when Napoleon died on the island of St.
Helena; so that it was beyond the realms of possibility that he should
have had any personal relations with Napoleon. The dream-experience
thus appears as something entirely foreign, interpolated between two
mutually related and successive periods of time.
"Nevertheless," continues Hildebrandt, "the apparent contrary is
just as true and correct. I believe that side by side with this
seclusion and insulation there may still exist the most intimate
interrelation. We may therefore justly say: Whatever the dream may
offer us, it derives its material from reality, and from the psychic
life centered upon this reality. However extraordinary the dream may
seem, it can never detach itself from the real world, and its most
sublime as well as its most ridiculous constructions must always
borrow their elementary material either from that which our eyes
have beheld in the outer world, or from that which has already found a
place somewhere in our waking thoughts; in other words, it must be
taken from that which we have already experienced, either
objectively or subjectively."
B. The Material of Dreams- Memory in Dreams
-
That all the material composing the content of a dream is somehow
derived from experience, that it is reproduced or remembered in the
dream- this at least may be accepted as an incontestable fact. Yet
it would be wrong to assume that such a connection between the
dream-content and reality will be easily obvious from a comparison
between the two. On the contrary, the connection must be carefully
sought, and in quite a number of cases it may for a long while elude
discovery. The reason for this is to be found in a number of
peculiarities evinced by the faculty of memory in dreams; which
peculiarities, though generally observed, have hitherto defied
explanation. It will be worth our while to examine these
characteristics exhaustively.
To begin with, it happens that certain material appears in the
dream-content which cannot be subsequently recognized, in the waking
state, as being part of one's knowledge and experience. One
remembers clearly enough having dreamed of the thing in question,
but one cannot recall the actual experience or the time of its
occurrence. The dreamer is therefore in the dark as to the source
which the dream has tapped, and is even tempted to believe in an
independent productive activity on the part of the dream, until, often
long afterwards, a fresh episode restores the memory of that former
experience, which had been given up for lost, and so reveals the
source of the dream. One is therefore forced to admit that in the
dream something was known and remembered that cannot be remembered
in the waking state. *
-
* Vaschide even maintains that it has often been observed that in
one's dreams one speaks foreign languages more fluently and with
greater purity than in the waking state.
-
Delboeuf relates from his own experience an especially impressive
example of this kind. He saw in his dream the courtyard of his house
covered with snow, and found there two little lizards, half-frozen and
buried in the snow. Being a lover of animals he picked them up, warmed
them, and put them back into the hole in the wall which was reserved
especially for them. He also gave them a few fronds of a little fern
which was growing on the wall, and of which he knew they were very
fond. In the dream he knew the name of the plant; Asplenium ruta
muralis. The dream continued returning after a digression to the
lizards, and to his astonishment Delboeuf saw two other little lizards
falling upon what was left of the ferns. On turning his eyes to the
open fields he saw a fifth and a sixth lizard making for the hole in
the wall, and finally the whole road was covered by a procession of
lizards, all wandering in the same direction.
In his waking state Delboeuf knew only a few Latin names of
plants, and nothing of any Asplenium. To his great surprise he
discovered that a fern of this name did actually exist, and that the
correct name was Asplenium ruta muraria, which the dream had
slightly distorted. An accidental coincidence was of course
inconceivable; yet where he got his knowledge of the name Asplenium in
the dream remained a mystery to him.
The dream occurred in 1862. Sixteen years later, while at the
house of one of his friends, the philosopher noticed a small album
containing dried plants, such as are sold as souvenirs to visitors
in many parts of Switzerland. A sudden recollection came to him: he
opened the herbarium, discovered therein the Asplenium of his dream,
and recognized his own handwriting in the accompanying Latin name. The
connection could now be traced. In 1860, two years before the date
of the lizard dream, one of his friend's sisters, while on her
wedding-journey, had paid a visit to Delboeuf. She had with her at the
time this very album, which was intended for her brother, and Delboeuf
had taken the trouble to write, at the dictation of a botanist, the
Latin name under each of the dried plants.
The same good fortune which gave this example its unusual value
enabled Delboeuf to trace yet another portion of this dream to its
forgotten source. One day in 1877 he came upon an old volume of an
illustrated periodical, in which he found the whole procession of
lizards pictured, just as he had dreamt of it in 1862. The volume bore
the date 1861, and Delboeuf remembered that he had subscribed to the
journal since its first appearance.
That dreams have at their disposal recollections which are
inaccessible to the waking state is such a remarkable and
theoretically important fact that I should like to draw attention to
the point by recording yet other hypermnesic dreams. Maury relates
that for some time the word Mussidan used to occur to him during the
day. He knew it to be the name of a French city, but that was all. One
night he dreamed of a conversation with a certain person, who told him
that she came from Mussidan, and, in answer to his question as to
where the city was, she replied: "Mussidan is the principal town of
a district in the department of Dordogne." On waking, Maury gave no
credence to the information received in his dream; but the gazetteer
showed it to be perfectly correct. In this case the superior knowledge
of the dreamer was confirmed, but it was not possible to trace the
forgotten source of this knowledge.
Jessen (p. 55) refers to a very similar incident, the period of
which is more remote. "Among others we may here mention the dream of
the elder Scaliger (Hennings, l.c., p. 300), who wrote a poem in
praise of the famous men of Verona, and to whom a man named
Brugnolus appeared in a dream, complaining that he had been neglected.
Though Scaliger could not remember that he had heard of the man, he
wrote some verses in his honour, and his son learned subsequently that
a certain Brugnolus had at one time been famed in Verona as a critic."
A hypermnesic dream, especially remarkable for the fact that a
memory not at first recalled was afterwards recognized in a dream
which followed the first, is narrated by the Marquis d'Hervey de St.
Denis: * "I once dreamed of a young woman with fair golden hair,
whom I saw chatting with my sister as she showed her a piece of
embroidery. In my dream she seemed familiar to me; I thought,
indeed, that I had seen her repeatedly. After waking, her face was
still quite vividly before me, but I was absolutely unable to
recognize it. I fell asleep again; the dream-picture repeated
itself. In this new dream I addressed the golden-haired lady and asked
her whether I had not had the pleasure of meeting her somewhere. 'Of
course,' she replied; 'don't you remember the bathing-place at
Pornic?' Thereupon I awoke, and I was then able to recall with
certainty and in detail the incidents with which this charming
dream-face was connected."
-
* See Vaschide, p. 232.
-
The same author * recorded that a musician of his acquaintance
once heard in a dream a melody which was absolutely new to him. Not
until many years later did he find it in an old collection of
musical compositions, though still he could not remember ever having
seen it before.
-
* Vaschide, p. 233
-
I believe that Myers has published a whole collection of such
hypermnesic dreams in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, but these, unfortunately, are inaccessible to me. I think
everyone who occupies himself with dreams will recognize, as a very
common phenomenon, the fact that a dream will give proof of the
knowledge and recollection of matters of which the dreamer, in his
waking state, did not imagine himself to be cognizant. In my
analytic investigations of nervous patients, of which I shall speak
later, I find that it happens many times every week that I am able
to convince them, from their dreams, that they are perfectly well
acquainted with quotations, obscene expressions, etc., and make use of
them in their dreams, although they have forgotten them in their
waking state. I shall here cite an innocent example of
dream-hypermnesia, because it was easy to trace the source of the
knowledge which was accessible only in the dream.
A patient dreamed amongst other things (in a rather long dream) that
he ordered a kontuszowka in a cafe, and after telling me this he asked
me what it could be, as he had never heard the name before. I was able
to tell him that kontuszowka was a Polish liqueur, which he could
not have invented in his dream, as the name had long been familiar
to me from the advertisements. At first the patient would not
believe me, but some days later, after he had allowed his dream of the
cafe to become a reality, he noticed the name on a signboard at a
street corner which for some months he had been passing at least twice
a day.
I have learned from my own dreams how largely the discovery of the
origin of individual dream-elements may be dependent on chance.
Thus, for some years before I had thought of writing this book, I
was haunted by the picture of a church tower of fairly simple
construction, which I could not remember ever having seen. I then
suddenly recognized it, with absolute certainty, at a small station
between Salzburg and Reichenhall. This was in the late nineties, and
the first time I had travelled over this route was in 1886. In later
years, when I was already busily engaged in the study of dreams, I was
quite annoyed by the frequent recurrence of the dream-image of a
certain peculiar locality. I saw, in definite orientation to my own
person- on my left- a dark space in which a number of grotesque
sandstone figures stood out. A glimmering recollection, which I did
not quite believe, told me that it was the entrance to a
beer-cellar; but I could explain neither the meaning nor the origin of
this dream-picture. In 1907 I happened to go to Padua, which, to my
regret, I had been unable to visit since 1895. My first visit to
this beautiful university city had been unsatisfactory. I had been
unable to see Giotto's frescoes in the church of the Madonna dell'
Arena: I set out for the church, but turned back on being informed
that it was closed for the day. On my second visit, twelve years
later, I thought I would compensate myself for this disappointment,
and before doing anything else I set out for Madonna dell' Arena. In
the street leading to it, on my left, probably at the spot where I had
turned back in 1895, I discovered the place, with its sandstone
figures, which I had so often seen in my dream. It was, in fact, the
entrance to a restaurant garden.
One of the sources from which dreams draw material for reproduction-
material of which some part is not recalled or utilized in our
waking thoughts- is to be found in childhood. Here I will cite only
a few of the authors who have observed and emphasized this fact:
Hildebrandt (p. 23): "It has already been expressly admitted that
a dream sometimes brings back to the mind, with a wonderful power of
reproduction, remote and even forgotten experiences from the
earliest periods of one's life."
Strumpell (p. 40): "The subject becomes more interesting still
when we remember how the dream sometimes drags out, as it were, from
the deepest and densest psychic deposits which later years have
piled upon the earliest experiences of childhood, the pictures of
certain persons, places and things, quite intact, and in all their
original freshness. This is confined not merely to such impressions as
were vividly perceived at the time of their occurrence, or were
associated with intense psychological values, to recur later in the
dream as actual reminiscences which give pleasure to the waking
mind. On the contrary, the depths of the dream-memory rather contain
such images of persons, places, things and early experiences as either
possessed but little consciousness and no psychic value whatsoever, or
have long since lost both, and therefore appear totally strange and
unknown, both in the dream and in the waking state, until their
early origin is revealed."
Volkelt (p. 119): "It is especially to be remarked how readily
infantile and youthful reminiscences enter into our dreams. What we
have long ceased to think about, what has long since lost all
importance for us, is constantly recalled by the dream."
The control which the dream exercises over material from our
childhood, most of which, as is well known, falls into the lacunae
of our conscious memory, is responsible for the production of
interesting hypermnesic dreams, of which I shall cite a few more
examples.
Maury relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from his
native city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where his father was
superintending the construction of a bridge. One night a dream
transported him to Trilport and he was once more playing in the
streets there. A man approached him, wearing a sort of uniform.
Maury asked him his name, and he introduced himself, saying that his
name was C, and that he was a bridge-guard. On waking, Maury, who
still doubted the actuality of the reminiscence, asked his old
servant, who had been with him in his childhood, whether she
remembered a man of this name. "Of course," was the reply; "he used to
be watchman on the bridge which your father was building then."
Maury records another example, which demonstrates no less clearly
the reliability of the reminiscences of childhood that emerge in our
dreams. M. F., who as a child had lived in Montbrison, decided,
after an absence of twenty-five years, to visit his home and the old
friends of his family. The night before his departure he dreamt that
he had reached his destination, and that near Montbrison he met a
man whom he did not know by sight, and who told him that he was M. F.,
a friend of his father's. The dreamer remembered that as a child he
had known a gentleman of this name, but on waking he could no longer
recall his features. Several days later, having actually arrived at
Montbrison, he found once more the locality of his dream, which he had
thought was unknown to him, and there he met a man whom he at once
recognized as the M. F. of his dream, with only this difference,
that the real person was very much older than his dream-image.
Here I might relate one of my own dreams, in which the recalled
impression takes the form of an association. In my dream I saw a man
whom I recognized, while dreaming, as the doctor of my native town.
His face was not distinct, but his features were blended with those of
one of my schoolmasters, whom I still meet from time to time. What
association there was between the two persons I could not discover
on waking, but upon questioning my mother concerning the doctor I
learned that he was a one-eyed man. The schoolmaster, whose image in
my dream obscured that of the physician, had also only one eye. I
had not seen the doctor for thirty-eight years, and as far as I know I
had never thought of him in my waking state, although a scar on my
chin might have reminded me of his professional attentions.
As though to counterbalance the excessive part which is played in
our dreams by the impressions of childhood, many authors assert that
the majority of dreams reveal elements drawn from our most recent
experiences. Robert (p. 46) even declares that the normal dream
generally occupies itself only with the impressions of the last few
days. We shall find, indeed, that the theory of the dream advanced
by Robert absolutely requires that our oldest impressions should be
thrust into the background, and our most recent ones brought to the
fore. However, the fact here stated by Robert is correct; this I can
confirm from my own investigations. Nelson, an American author,
holds that the impressions received in a dream most frequently date
from the second day before the dream, or from the third day before it,
as though the impressions of the day immediately preceding the dream
were not sufficiently weakened and remote.
Many authors who are unwilling to question the intimate connection
between the dream-content and the waking state have been struck by the
fact that the impressions which have intensely occupied the waking
mind appear in dreams only after they have been to some extent removed
from the mental activities of the day. Thus, as a rule, we do not
dream of a beloved person who is dead while we are still overwhelmed
with sorrow (Delage). Yet Miss Hallam, one of the most recent
observers, has collected examples which reveal the very opposite
behaviour in this respect, and upholds the claims of psychological
individuality in this matter.
The third, most remarkable, and at the same time most
incomprehensible, peculiarity of memory in dreams is shown in the
selection of the material reproduced; for here it is not, as in the
waking state, only the most significant things that are held to be
worth remembering, but also the most indifferent and insignificant
details. In this connection I will quote those authors who have
expressed their surprise in the most emphatic language.
Hildebrandt (p. 11): "For it is a remarkable fact that dreams do
not, as a rule, take their elements from important and far-reaching
events, or from the intense and urgent interests of the preceding day,
but from unimportant incidents, from the worthless odds and ends of
recent experience or of the remoter past. The most shocking death in
our family, the impressions of which keep us awake long into the
night, is obliterated from our memories until the first moment of
waking brings it back to us with distressing force. On the other hand,
the wart on the forehead of a passing stranger, to whom we did not
give a moment's thought once he was out of sight, finds a place in our
dreams."
Strumpell (p. 39) speaks of "cases in which the analysis of a
dream brings to light elements which, although derived from the
experiences of yesterday or the day before yesterday, were yet so
unimportant and worthless for the waking state that they were
forgotten soon after they were experienced. Some experiences may be
the chance-heard remarks of other persons, or their superficially
observed actions, or, fleeting perceptions of things or persons, or
isolated phrases that we have read, etc."
Havelock Ellis (p. 727): "The profound emotions of waking life,
the questions and problems on which we spend our chief voluntary
mental energy, are not those which usually present themselves at
once to dream-consciousness. It is, so far as the immediate past is
concerned, mostly the trifling, the incidental, the 'forgotten'
impressions of daily life which reappear in our dreams. The psychic
activities that are awake most intensely are those that sleep most
profoundly."
It is precisely in connection with these characteristics of memory
in dreams that Binz (p. 45) finds occasion to express
dissatisfaction with the explanations of dreams which he himself had
favoured: "And the normal dream raises similar questions. Why do we
not always dream of mental impressions of the day before, instead of
going back, without any perceptible reason, to the almost forgotten
past, now lying far behind us? Why, in a dream, does consciousness
so often revive the impression of indifferent memory-pictures, while
the cerebral cells that bear the most sensitive records of
experience remain for the most part inert and numb, unless an acute
revival during the waking state has quite recently excited them?"
We can readily understand how the strange preference shown by the
dream-memory for the indifferent and therefore disregarded details
of daily experience must commonly lead us altogether to overlook the
dependence of dreams on the waking state, or must at least make it
difficult for us to prove this dependence in any individual case. Thus
it happened that in the statistical treatment of her own and her
friend's dream, Miss Whiton Calkins found that 11 per cent of the
entire number showed no relation to the waking state. Hildebrandt
was certainly correct in his assertion that all our dream-images could
be genetically explained if we devoted enough time and material to the
tracing of their origin. To be sure, he calls this "a most tedious and
thankless job. For most often it would lead us to ferret out all sorts
of psychically worthless things from the remotest corners of our
storehouse of memories, and to bring to light all sorts of quite
indifferent events of long ago from the oblivion which may have
overtaken them an hour after their occurrence." I must, however,
express my regret that this discerning author refrained from following
the path which at first sight seemed so unpromising, for it would have
led him directly to the central point of the explanation of dreams.
The behaviour of memory in dreams is surely most significant for any
theory of memory whatsoever. It teaches us that "nothing which we have
once psychically possessed is ever entirely lost" (Scholz, p. 34);
or as Delboeuf puts it, "que toute impression, meme la plus
insignificante, laisse une trace inalterable, indifiniment susceptible
de reparaitre au jour"; * a conclusion to which we are urged by so
many other pathological manifestations of mental life. Let us bear
in mind this extraordinary capacity of the memory in dreams, in
order the more keenly to realize the contradiction which has to be put
forward in certain dream-theories to be mentioned later, which seek to
explain the absurdities and incoherences of dreams by a partial
forgetting of what we have known during the day.
-
* That every impression, even the most insignificant, leaves an
ineradicable mark, indefinitely capable of reappearing by day.
-
It might even occur to one to reduce the phenomenon of dreaming to
that of remembering, and to regard the dream as the manifestation of a
reproductive activity, unresting even at night, which is an end in
itself. This would seem to be in agreement with statements such as
those made by Pilcz, according to which definite relations between the
time of dreaming and the contents of a dream may be demonstrated,
inasmuch as the impressions reproduced by the dream in deep sleep
belong to the remote past, while those reproduced towards morning
are of recent origin. But such a conception is rendered improbable
from the outset by the manner in which the dream deals with the
material to be remembered. Strumpell rightly calls our attention to
the fact that repetitions of experiences do not occur in dreams. It is
true that a dream will make a beginning in that direction, but the
next link is wanting; it appears in a different form, or is replaced
by something entirely novel. The dream gives us only fragmentary
reproductions; this is so far the rule that it permits of a
theoretical generalization. Still, there are exceptions in which an
episode is repeated in a dream as completely as it can be reproduced
by our waking memory. Delboeuf relates of one of his university
colleagues that a dream of his repeated, in all its details, a
perilous drive in which he escaped accident as if by miracle. Miss
Calkins mentions two dreams the contents of which exactly reproduced
an experience of the previous day, and in a later chapter I shall have
occasion to give an example that came to my knowledge of a childish
experience which recurred unchanged in a dream. *
-
* From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at
all rare to find in dreams reproductions of simple and unimportant
occupations of everyday life, such as packing trunks, preparing food
in the kitchen, etc., but in such dreams the dreamer himself
emphasizes not the character of the recollection but its "reality"- "I
really did this during the day."
C. Dream-Stimuli and Sources
-
What is meant by dream-stimuli and dream-sources may be explained by
a reference to the popular saying: "Dreams come from the stomach."
This notion covers a theory which conceives the dream as resulting
from a disturbance of sleep. We should not have dreamed if some
disturbing element had not come into play during our sleep, and the
dream is the reaction against this disturbance.
The discussion of the exciting causes of dreams occupies a great
deal of space in the literature of dreams. It is obvious that this
problem could have made its appearance only after dreams had become an
object of biological investigation. The ancients, who conceived of
dreams as divine inspirations, had no need to look for stimuli; for
them a dream was due to the will of divine or demonic powers, and
its content was the product of their special knowledge and
intention. Science, however, immediately raised the question whether
the stimuli of dreams were single or multiple, and this in turn led to
the consideration whether the causal explanation of dreams belonged to
the region of psychology or to that of physiology. Most authors appear
to assume that disturbance of sleep, and hence dreams, may arise
from various causes, and that physical as well as mental stimuli may
play the part of dream-excitants. Opinions differ widely in preferring
this or the other factor as the cause of dreams, and in classifying
them in the order of importance.
Whenever the sources of dreams are completely enumerated they fall
into the following four categories, which have also been employed in
the classification of dreams: (1) external (objective) sensory
stimuli; (2) internal (subjective) sensory stimuli; (3) internal
(organic) physical stimuli; (4) Purely psychical sources of
excitation.
-
1. External sensory stimuli
-
The younger Strumpell, the son of the philosopher, whose work on
dreams has already more than once served us as a guide in
considering the problems of dreams, has, as is well known, recorded
his observations of a patient afflicted with general anaesthesia of
the skin and with paralysis of several of the higher sensory organs.
This man would laps into sleep whenever the few remaining sensory
paths between himself and the outer world were closed. When we wish to
fall asleep we are accustomed to strive for a condition similar to
that obtaining in Strumpell's experiment. We close the most
important sensory portals, the eyes, and we endeavour to protect the
other senses from all stimuli or from any change of the stimuli
already acting upon them. We then fall asleep, although our
preparations are never wholly successful. For we can never
completely insulate the sensory organs, nor can we entirely abolish
the excitability of the sensory organs themselves. That we may at
any time be awakened by intenser stimuli should prove to us "that
the mind has remained in constant communication with the external
world even during sleep." The sensory stimuli that reach us during
sleep may easily become the source of dreams.
There are a great many stimuli of this nature, ranging from those
unavoidable stimuli which are proper to the state of sleep or
occasionally admitted by it, to those fortuitous stimuli which are
calculated to wake the sleeper. Thus a strong light may fall upon
the eyes, a noise may be heard, or an odour may irritate the mucous
membranes of the nose. In our unintentional movements during sleep
we may lay bare parts of the body, and thus expose them to a sensation
of cold, or by a change of position we may excite sensations of
pressure and touch. A mosquito may bite us, or a slight nocturnal
mischance may simultaneously attack more than one sense-organ.
Observers have called attention to a whole series of dreams in which
the stimulus ascertained on waking and some part of the
dream-content corresponded to such a degree that the stimulus could be
recognized as the source of the dream.
I shall here cite a number of such dreams, collected by Jessen (p.
527), which are traceable to more or less accidental objective sensory
stimuli. Every noise indistinctly perceived gives rise to
corresponding dream-representations; the rolling of thunder takes us
into the thick of battle, the crowing of a cock may be transformed
into human shrieks of terror, and the creaking of a door may conjure
up dreams of burglars breaking into the house. When one of our
blankets slips off us at night we may dream that we are walking
about naked, or falling into water. If we lie diagonally across the
bed with our feet extending beyond the edge, we may dream of
standing on the brink of a terrifying precipice, or of falling from
a great height. Should our head accidentally get under the pillow we
may imagine a huge rock overhanging us and about to crush us under its
weight. An accumulation of semen produces voluptuous dreams, and local
pains give rise to ideas of suffering ill-treatment, of hostile
attacks, or of accidental bodily injuries....
"Meier (Versuch einer Erklarung des Nachtwandelns, Halle, 1758, p.
33) once dreamed of being attacked by several men who threw him flat
on the ground and drove a stake into the earth between his first and
second toes. While imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and
felt a piece of straw sticking between his toes. The same author,
according to Hemmings (Von den Traumen und Nachtwandlern, Weimar,
1784, p. 258), "dreamed on another occasion, when his nightshirt was
rather too tight round his neck, that he was being hanged. In his
youth Hoffbauer dreamed of having fallen from a high wall, and
found, on waking, that the bedstead had come apart, and that he had
actually fallen on to the floor.... Gregory relates that he once
applied a hot-water bottle to his feet, and dreamed of taking a trip
to the summit of Mount Etna, where he found the heat of the soil
almost unbearable. After having a blister applied to his head, another
man dreamed of being scalped by Indians; still another, whose shirt
was damp, dreamed that he was dragged through a stream. An attack of
gout caused a patient to believe that he was in the hands of the
Inquisition, and suffering the pains of torture (Macnish)."
The argument that there is a resemblance between the
dream-stimulus and the dream-content would be confirmed if, by a
systematic induction of stimuli, we should succeed in producing dreams
corresponding to these stimuli. According to Macnish such
experiments had already been made by Giron de Buzareingues. "He left
his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling on a mail-coach by night.
He remarked, in this connection, that travellers were well aware how
cold the knees become in a coach at night. On another occasion he left
the back of his head uncovered, and dreamed that he was taking part in
a religious ceremony in the open air. In the country where he lived it
was customary to keep the head always covered except on occasions of
this kind."
Maury reports fresh observation on self-induced dreams of his own.
(A number of other experiments were unsuccessful.)
1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his
nose. He dreamed of an awful torture, viz., that a mask of pitch was
stuck to his face and then forcibly torn off, bringing the skin with
it.
2. Scissors were whetted against a pair of tweezers. He heard
bells ringing, then sounds of tumult which took him back to the days
of the Revolution of 1848.
3. Eau de Cologne was held to his nostrils. He found himself in
Cairo, in the shop of Johann Maria Farina. This was followed by
fantastic adventures which he was not able to recall.
4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blister was being
applied, and thought of a doctor who had treated him in childhood.
5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that
chauffeurs * had broken into the house, and were forcing the occupants
to give up their money by thrusting their feet into braziers. The
Duchesse d'Abrantes, whose secretary he imagined himself to be then
entered the room.
-
* Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendee who resorted to
this form of torture.
-
6. A drop of water was allowed to fall on to his forehead. He
imagined himself in Italy, perspiring heavily, and drinking the
white wine of Orvieto.
7. When the light of a candle screened with red paper was allowed to
fall on his face, he dreamed of thunder, of heat, and of a storm at
sea which he once witnessed in the English Channel.
Hervey, Weygandt, and others have made attempts to produce dreams
experimentally.
Many have observed the striking skill of the dream in interweaving
into its structure sudden impressions from the outer world, in such
a manner as to represent a gradually approaching catastrophe
(Hildebrandt). "In former years," this author relates, "I occasionally
made use of an alarm-clock in order to wake punctually at a certain
hour in the morning. It probably happened hundreds of times that the
sound of this instrument fitted into an apparently very long and
connected dream, as though the entire dream had been especially
designed for it, as though it found in this sound its appropriate
and logically indispensable climax, its inevitable denouement."
I shall presently have occasion to cite three of these alarm-clock
dreams in a different connection.
Volkelt (p. 68) relates: "A composer once dreamed that he was
teaching a class, and was just explaining something to his pupils.
When he had finished he turned to one of the boys with the question:
'Did you understand me?' The boy cried out like one possessed 'Oh,
ja!' Annoyed by this, he reprimanded his pupil for shouting. But now
the entire class was screaming 'Orja,' then 'Eurjo,' and finally
'Feuerjo.' He was then aroused by the actual fire alarm in the
street."
Garnier (Traite des facultes de l'ame, 1865), on the authority of
Radestock, relates that Napoleon I, while sleeping in a carriage,
was awakened from a dream by an explosion which took him back to the
crossing of the Tagliamento and the bombardment of the Austrians, so
that he started up, crying, "We have been undermined."
The following dream of Maury's has become celebrated: He was ill
in bed; his mother was sitting beside him. He dreamed of the Reign
of Terror during the Revolution. He witnessed some terrible scenes
of murder, and finally he himself was summoned before the Tribunal.
There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the
sorry heroes of those terrible days; he had to give an account of
himself, and after all manner of incidents which did not fix
themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an
enormous crowd, he was led to the place of execution. He mounted the
scaffold; the executioner tied him to the plank, it tipped over, and
the knife of the guillotine fell. He felt his head severed from his
trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety, only to find that the
head-board of the bed had fallen, and had actually struck the cervical
vertebrae just where the knife of the guillotine would have fallen.
This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion, initiated by Le
Lorrain and Egger in the Revue Philosophique, as to whether, and
how, it was possible for the dreamer to crowd together an amount of
dream-content apparently so large in the short space of time
elapsing between the perception of the waking stimulus and the
moment of actual waking.
Examples of this nature show that objective stimuli occurring in
sleep are among the most firmly-established of all the sources of
dreams; they are, indeed, the only stimuli of which the layman knows
anything whatever. If we ask an educated person who is not familiar
with the literature of dreams how dreams originate, he is certain to
reply by a reference to a case known to him in which a dream has
been explained after waking by a recognized objective stimulus.
Science, however, cannot stop here, but is incited to further
investigation by the observation that the stimulus influencing the
senses during sleep does not appear in the dream at all in its true
form, but is replaced by some other representation, which is in some
way related to it. But the relation existing between the stimulus
and the resulting dream is, according to Maury, "une affinite
quelconque mais qui n'est pas unique et exclusive" * (p. 72). If we
read, for example, three of Hildebrandt's "alarm-clock dreams," we
shall be compelled to ask why the same casual stimulus evoked so
many different results, and why just these results and no others.
-
* A sort of relation which is, however, neither unique nor
exclusive.
-
(p. 37): "I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning. I stroll
through the green meadows to a neighbouring village, where I see
numbers of the inhabitants going to church, wearing their best clothes
and carrying their hymn-books under their arms. I remember that it
is Sunday, and that the morning service will soon begin. I decide to
attend it, but as I am rather overheated I think I will wait in the
churchyard until I am cooler. While reading the various epitaphs, I
hear the sexton climbing the church-tower, and I see above me the
small bell which is about to ring for the beginning of service. For
a little while it hangs motionless; then it begins to swing, and
suddenly its notes resound so clearly and penetratingly that my
sleep comes to an end. But the notes of the bell come from the
alarm-clock."
"A second combination. It is a bright winter day; the streets are
deep in snow. I have promised to go on a sleigh-ride, but I have to
wait some time before I am told that the sleigh is at the door. Now
I am preparing to get into the sleigh. I put on my furs, the
foot-warmer is put in, and at last I have taken my seat. But still
my departure is delayed. At last the reins are twitched, the horses
start, and the sleigh bells, now violently shaken, strike up their
familiar music with a force that instantly tears the gossamer of my
dream. Again it is only the shrill note of my alarm-clock."
"Yet a third example. I see the kitchen-maid walking along the
passage to the dining-room, with a pile of several dozen plates. The
porcelain column in her arms seems to me to be in danger of losing its
equilibrium. 'Take care,' I exclaim, 'you will drop the whole pile!'
The usual retort is naturally made- that she is used to such things,
etc. Meanwhile I continue to follow her with my anxious gaze, and
behold, at the threshold the fragile plates fall and crash and roll
across the floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon perceive that the
endless din is not really a rattling but a true ringing, and with this
ringing the dreamer now becomes aware that the alarm-clock has done
its duty."
The question why the dreaming mind misjudges the nature of the
objective sensory stimulus has been answered by Strumpell, and in an
almost identical fashion by Wundt; their explanation is that the
reaction of the mind to the stimulus attacking sleep is complicated
and confused by the formation of illusions. A sensory impression is
recognized by us and correctly interpreted- that is, it is classed
with the memory-group to which it belongs according to all previous
experience if the impression is strong, clear, and sufficiently
prolonged, and if we have sufficient time to submit it to those mental
processes. But if these conditions are not fulfilled we mistake the
object which gives rise to the impression, and on the basis of this
impression we construct an illusion. "If one takes a walk in an open
field and perceives indistinctly a distant object, it may happen
that one will at first take it for a horse." On closer inspection
the image of a cow, resting, may obtrude itself, and the picture may
finally resolve itself with certainty into a group of people sitting
on the ground. The impressions which the mind receives during sleep
from external stimuli are of a similarly indistinct nature; they
give rise to illusions because the impression evokes a greater or
lesser number of memory-images, through which it acquires its
psychic value. As for the question, in which of the many possible
spheres of memory the corresponding images are aroused, and which of
the possible associative connections are brought into play, that- to
quote Strumpell again- is indeterminable, and is left, as it were,
to the caprices of the mind.
Here we may take our choice. We may admit that the laws of
dream-formation cannot really be traced any further, and so refrain
from asking whether or not the interpretation of the illusion evoked
by the sensory impression depends upon still other conditions; or we
may assume that the objective sensory stimulus encroaching upon
sleep plays only a modest role as a dream-source, and that other
factors determine the choice of the memory-image to be evoked. Indeed,
on carefully examining Maury's experimentally produced dreams, which I
have purposely cited in detail, one is inclined to object that his
investigations trace the origin of only one element of the dreams, and
that the rest of the dream-content seems too independent and too
full of detail to be explained by a single requirement, namely, that
it must correspond with the element experimentally introduced. Indeed,
one even begins to doubt the illusion theory, and the power of
objective impressions to shape the dream, when one realizes that
such impressions are sometimes subjected to the most peculiar and
far-fetched interpretations in our dreams. Thus M. Simon tells of a
dream in which he saw persons of gigantic stature * seated at a table,
and heard distinctly the horrible clattering produced by the impact of
their jaws as they chewed their food. On waking he heard the clatter
of a horse's hooves as it galloped past his window. If in this case
the sound of the horse's hooves had revived ideas from the
memory-sphere of Gulliver's Travels, the sojourn with the giants of
Brobdingnag, and the virtuous horse-like creatures- as I should
perhaps interpret the dream without any assistance on the author's
part- ought not the choice of a memory-sphere so alien to the stimulus
to be further elucidated by other motives?
-
* Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that the
dream is dealing with a scene from the dreamer's childhood. This
interpretation of the dream as a reminiscence of Gulliver's Travels
is, by the way, a good example of how an interpretation should not
be made. The dream-interpreter should not permit his own
intelligence to operate in disregard of the dreamer's impressions.
-
2. Internal (subjective) sensory stimuli
-
All objections to the contrary notwithstanding, we must admit that
the role of the objective sensory stimuli as producers of dreams has
been indisputably established, and if, having regard to their nature
and their frequency, these stimuli seem perhaps insufficient to
explain all dream-pictures, this indicates that we should look for
other dream-sources which act in a similar fashion. I do not know
where the idea first arose that together with the external sensory
stimuli the internal (subjective) stimuli should also be considered,
but as a matter of fact this has been done more or less explicitly
in all the more recent descriptions of the aetiology of dreams. "I
believe," says Wundt (p. 363), "that an important part is played in
dream-illusions by those subjective sensations of sight and hearing
which are familiar to us in the waking state as a luminous chaos in
the dark field of the vision, and a ringing, buzzing, etc., of the
ears, and in especial, subjective irritations of the retina. This
explains the remarkable tendency of dreams to delude the eyes with
numbers of similar or identical objects. Thus we see outspread
before our eyes innumerable birds, butterflies, fishes, coloured
beads, flowers, etc. Here the luminous dust in the dark field of
vision has assumed fantastic forms, and the many luminous points of
which it consists are embodied in our dreams in as many single images,
which, owing to the mobility of the luminous chaos, are seen as moving
objects. This is perhaps the reason of the dream's decided
preference for the most varied animal forms, for owing to the
multiplicity of such forms they can readily adapt themselves to the
subjective luminous images."
The subjective sensory stimuli as a source of dreams have the
obvious advantage that, unlike objective stimuli, they are independent
of external accidents. They are, so to speak, at the disposal of the
interpretation whenever they are required. But they are inferior to
the objective sensory stimuli by the fact that their claim to the role
of dream-inciters- which observation and experiment have established
in the case of objective stimuli- can in their case be verified with
difficulty or not at all. The main proof of the dream-inciting power
of subjective sensory stimuli is afforded by the so-called
hypnogogic hallucinations, which have been described by Johann
Muller as "phantastic visual manifestations." They are those very
vivid and changeable pictures which with many people occur
constantly during the period of falling asleep, and which may linger
for a while even after the eyes have been opened. Maury, who was
very subject to these pictures, made a thorough study of them, and
maintained that they were related to or rather identical with
dream-images. This had already been asserted by Johann Muller. Maury
maintains that a certain psychic passivity is necessary for their
origin; that it requires a relaxation of the intensity of attention
(p. 59). But one may perceive a hypnogogic hallucination in any
frame of mind if one falls into such a lethargy for a moment, after
which one may perhaps wake up, until this oft-repeated process
terminates in sleep. According to Maury, if one wakes up shortly after
such an experience, it is often possible to trace in the dream the
images which one has perceived before falling asleep as hypnogogic
hallucinations (p. 134). Thus Maury on one occasion saw a series of
images of grotesque figures with distorted features and curiously
dressed hair, which obtruded themselves upon him with incredible
importunity during the period of falling asleep, and which, upon
waking, he recalled having seen in his dream. On another occasion,
while suffering from hunger, because he was subjecting himself to a
rather strict diet, he saw in one of his hypnogogic states a plate,
and a hand armed with a fork taking some food from the plate. In his
dream he found himself at a table abundantly supplied with food, and
heard the clatter of the diner's forks. On yet another occasion, after
falling asleep with strained and painful eyes, he had a hypnogogic
hallucination of microscopically small characters, which he was able
to decipher, one by one, only with a great effort; and on waking
from sleep an hour later he recalled a dream in which there was an
open book with very small letters, which he was obliged to read
through with laborious effort.
Not only pictures, but auditory hallucinations of words, names,
etc., may also occur hypnogogically, and then repeat themselves in the
dream, like an overture announcing the principal motif of the opera
which is to follow.
A more recent observer of hypnogogic hallucinations, G. Trumbull
Ladd, follows the same lines as Johann Muller and Maury. By dint of
practice he succeeded in acquiring the faculty of suddenly arousing
himself, without opening his eyes, two to five minutes after gradually
falling asleep. This enabled him to compare the disappearing retinal
sensations with the dream-images remaining in his memory. He assures
us that an intimate relation between the two can always be recognized,
inasmuch as the luminous dots and lines of light spontaneously
perceived by the retina produce, so to speak, the outline or scheme of
the psychically perceived dream-images. For example, a dream in
which he saw before him clearly printed lines, which he read and
studied, corresponded with a number of luminous spots arranged in
parallel lines; or, to express it in his own words: The clearly
printed page resolved itself into an object which appeared to his
waking perception like part of an actual printed page seen through a
small hole in a sheet of paper, but at a distance too great to
permit of its being read. Without in any way underestimating the
central element of the phenomenon, Ladd believes that hardly any
visual dream occurs in our minds that is not based on material
furnished by this internal condition of retinal irritability. This
is particularly true of dreams which occur shortly after falling
asleep in a dark room, while dreams occurring in the morning, near the
period of waking, receive their stimulus from the objective light
penetrating the eye in a brightly-lit room. The shifting and
infinitely variable character of the spontaneous luminous
excitations of the retina exactly corresponds with the fitful
succession of images presented to us in our dreams. If we attach any
importance to Ladd's observations, we cannot underrate the
productiveness of this subjective source of stimuli; for visual
images, as we know, are the principal constituents of our dreams.
The share contributed by the other senses, excepting, perhaps, the
sense of hearing, is relatively insignificant and inconstant.
-
3. Internal (organic) physical stimuli
-
If we are disposed to look for the sources of dreams not outside but
inside the organism, we must remember that almost all our internal
organs, which in a state of health hardly remind us of their
existence, may, in states of excitation- as we call them- or in
disease, become a source of the most painful sensations, and must
therefore be put on a par with the external excitants of pain and
sensation. Strumpell, for example, gives expression to a long-familiar
experience when he declares that "during sleep the psyche becomes
far more deeply and broadly conscious of its coporality than in the
waking state, and it is compelled to receive and to be influenced by
certain stimulating impressions originating in parts of the body,
and in alterations of the body, of which it is unconscious in the
waking state." Even Aristotle declares it to be quite possible that
a dream may draw our attention to incipient morbid conditions which we
have not noticed in the waking state (owing to the exaggerated
intensity of the impressions experienced in the dream; and some
medical authors, who certainly did not believe in the prophetic nature
of dreams, have admitted the significance of dreams, at least in so
far as the predicting of disease is concerned. [Cf. M. Simon, p. 31,
and many earlier writers.] *
-
* In addition to the diagnostic valuation of dreams (e.g., by
Hippocrates) mention must also be made of their therapeutic
significance in antiquity.
Among the Greeks there were dream oracles, which were vouchsafed
to patients in quest of recovery. The patient betook himself to the
temple of Apollo or Aesculapius; there he was subjected to various
ceremonies, bathed, rubbed and perfumed. A state of exaltation
having been thus induced, he was made to lie down in the temple on the
skin of a sacrificial ram. He fell asleep and dreamed of remedies,
which he saw in their natural form, or in symbolic images which the
priests afterwards interpreted.
For further references concerning the remedial dreams of the Greeks,
cf. Lehmann, i, 74; Bouche-Leclerq; Hermann, Gottesd. Altert. d.
Gr., SS 41; Privataltert. SS 38, 16; Bottinger in Sprengel's Beitr. z.
Gesch. d. Med., ii, p. 163, et seq.; W. Lloyd, Magnetism and Mesmerism
in Antiquity, London, 1877; Dollinger, Heidentum und Judentum, p. 130.
-
Even in our days there seems to be no lack of authenticated examples
of such diagnostic achievements on the part of dreams. Thus Tissie
cites from Artigues (Essai sur la valeur semeiologique des Reves)
the history of a woman of forty-three, who, during several years of
apparently perfect health, was troubled with anxiety-dreams, and in
whom a medical examination subsequently revealed an incipient
affection of the heart, to which she presently succumbed.
Serious derangements of the internal organs clearly excite dreams in
quite a number of persons. The frequency of anxiety-dreams in diseases
of the heart and lungs has been generally realized; indeed, this
function of the dream-life is emphasized by so many writers that I
shall here content myself with a reference to the literature of the
subject (Radestock, Spitta, Maury, M. Simon, Tissie). Tissie even
believes that the diseased organs impress upon the dream-content its
characteristic features. The dreams of persons suffering from diseases
of the heart are generally very brief, and end in a terrified
awakening; death under terrible circumstances almost always find a
place in their content. Those suffering from diseases of the lungs
dream of suffocation, of being crushed, and of flight, and a great
many of them are subject to the familiar nightmare- which, by the way,
Borner has succeeded in inducing experimentally by lying on the face
and covering the mouth and nostrils. In digestive disturbances the
dream contains ideas from the sphere of gustatory enjoyment and
disgust. Finally, the influence of sexual excitement on the
dream-content is obvious enough in everyone's experience, and provides
the strongest confirmation of the whole theory of dream-instigation by
organic sensation.
Moreover, if we study the literature of dreams it becomes quite
evident that some writers (Maury, Weygandt) have been led to the study
of dream-problems by the influence their own pathological state has
had on the content of their dreams.
The enlargement of the number of dream-sources by such undeniably
established facts is, however, not so important as one might be led to
suppose; for dreams are, after all, phenomena which occur in healthy
persons- perhaps in all persons, and every night- and a pathological
state of the organs is evidently not one of the indispensable
conditions. For us, however, the question is not whence particular
dreams originate, but rather: what is the exciting cause of ordinary
dreams in normal people?
But we have only to go a step farther to find a source of dreams
which is more prolific than any of those mentioned above, and which
promises indeed to be inexhaustible. If it is established that the
bodily organs become, in sickness, an exciting source of dreams, and
if we admit that the mind, when diverted during sleep from the outer
world, can devote more of its attention to the interior of the body,
we may readily assume that the organs need not necessarily become
diseased in order to permit stimuli, which in one way or another
grow into dream-images, to reach the sleeping mind. What in the waking
state we vaguely perceive as a general sensation, perceptible by its
quality alone- a sensation to which, in the opinion of physicians, all
the organic systems contribute their share- this general sensation
would at night attain a greater potency, and, acting through its
individual components, would constitute the most prolific as well as
the most usual source of dream-representations. We should then have to
discover the laws by which organic stimuli are translated into
dream-representations.
This theory of the origin of dreams is the one most favoured by
all medical writers. The obscurity which conceals the essence of our
being- the "moi splanchnique" as Tissie terms it- from our
knowledge, and the obscurity of the origin of dreams, correspond so
closely that it was inevitable that they should be brought into
relation with one another. The theory according to which the organic
sensations are responsible for dreams has, moreover, another
attraction for the physician, inasmuch as it favours the
aetiological union of the dream with mental derangement, both of which
reveal so many points of agreement in their manifestations, since
changes in the general organic massive sensation and in the stimuli
emanating from the internal organs are also considered to have a
far-reaching significance as regards the origin of the psychoses. It
is therefore not surprising that the organic stimulus theory can be
traced to several writers who have propounded this theory
independently.
A number of writers have followed the train of thought developed
by Schopenhauer in 1851. Our conception of the universe has its origin
in the recasting by the intellect of the impressions which reach it
from without in the moulds of time, space and causality. During the
day the stimuli proceeding from the interior of the organism, from the
sympathetic nervous system, exert at most an unconscious influence
on our mood. At night, however, when the overwhelming effect of the
impressions of the day is no longer operative, the impressions that
surge upward from within are able to force themselves on our
attention- just as in the night we hear the rippling of the brook that
was drowned in the clamour of the day. But how else can the
intellect react to these stimuli than by transforming them in
accordance with its own function into things which occupy space and
time and follow the lines of causality?- and so a dream originates.
Thus Scherner, and after him Volkelt, endeavoured to discover the more
intimate relations between physical sensations and dream-pictures; but
we shall reserve the discussion of this point for our chapter on the
theory of dreams.
As a result of a singularly logical analysis, the psychiatrist
Krauss referred the origin of dreams, and also of deliria and
delusions, to the same element, namely, to organically determined
sensations. According to him, there is hardly any part of the organism
which might not become the starting-point of a dream or a delusion.
Organically determined sensations, he says, "may be divided into two
classes: (1) general sensations- those affecting the whole system; (2)
specific sensations- those that are immanent in the principal
systems of the vegetative organism, and which may in turn be
subdivided into five groups: (a) the muscular, (b) the pneumatic,
(c) the gastric, (d) the sexual, (e) the peripheral sensations (p.
33 of the second article)."
The origin of the dream-image from physical sensations is
conceived by Krauss as follows: The awakened sensation, in
accordance with some law of association, evokes an idea or image
bearing some relation to it, and combines with this idea or image,
forming an organic structure, towards which, however, the
consciousness does not maintain its normal attitude. For it does not
bestow any attention on the sensation, but concerns itself entirely
with the accompanying ideas; and this explains why the facts of the
case have been so long misunderstood (p. 11 ff.). Krauss even gives
this process the special name of "transubstantiation of the sensations
into dream-images" (p. 24).
The influence of organic physical stimuli on the formation of dreams
is today almost universally admitted, but the question as to the
nature of the law underlying this relation is answered in various
ways, and often obscurely. On the basis of the theory of physical
excitation the special task of dream-interpretation is to trace back
the content of a dream to the causative organic stimulus, and if we do
not accept the rules of interpretation advanced by Scherner, we
shall often find ourselves confronted by the awkward fact that the
organic source of excitation reveals itself only in the content of the
dream.
A certain agreement, however, appears in the interpretation of the
various forms of dreams which have been designated as "typical,"
because they recur in so many persons with almost the same content.
Among these are the well-known dreams of falling from a height, of the
dropping out of teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because one
is naked or scantily clad. This last type of dream is said to be
caused simply by the dreamer's perception, felt in his sleep, that
he has thrown off the bedclothes and is uncovered. The dream that
one's teeth are dropping out is explained by "dental irritation,"
which does not, however, of necessity imply a morbid condition of
irritability in the teeth. According to Strumpell, the flying dream is
the adequate image employed by the mind to interpret the quantum of
stimulus emanating from the rising and sinking of the pulmonary
lobes when the cutaneous sensation of the thorax has lapsed into
insensibility. This latter condition causes the sensation which
gives rise to images of hovering in the air. The dream of falling from
a height is said to be due to the fact that an arm falls away from the
body, or a flexed knee is suddenly extended, after unconsciousness
of the sensation of cutaneous pressure has supervened, whereupon
this sensation returns to consciousness, and the transition from
unconsciousness to consciousness embodies itself psychically as a
dream of falling (Strumpell, p. 118). The weakness of these fairly
plausible attempts at explanation clearly lies in the fact that
without any further elucidation they allow this or that group of
organic sensations to disappear from psychic perception, or to obtrude
themselves upon it, until the constellation favourable for the
explanation has been established. Later on, however, I shall have
occasion to return to the subject of typical dreams and their origin.
From a comparison of a series of similar dreams, M. Simon
endeavoured to formulate certain rules governing the influence of
organic sensations on the nature of the resulting dream. He says (p.
34): "If during sleep any organic apparatus, which normally
participates in the expression of an affect, for any reason enters
into the state of excitation to which it is usually aroused by the
affect, the dream thus produced will contain representations which
harmonize with that affect."
Another rule reads as follows (p. 35): "If, during sleep, an organic
apparatus is in a state of activity, stimulation, or disturbance,
the dream will present ideas which correspond with the nature of the
organic function performed by that apparatus."
Mourly Vold has undertaken to prove the supposed influence of bodily
sensation on the production of dreams by experimenting on a single
physiological territory. He changed the positions of a sleeper's
limbs, and compared the resulting dreams with these changes. He
recorded the following results:
1. The position of a limb in a dream corresponds approximately to
that of reality, i.e., we dream of a static condition of the limb
which corresponds with the actual condition.
2. When one dreams of a moving limb it always happens that one of
the positions occurring in the execution of this movement
corresponds with the actual position.
3. The position of one's own limb may in the dream be attributed
to another person.
4. One may also dream that the movement in question is impeded.
5. The limb in any particular position may appear in the dream as an
animal or monster, in which case a certain analogy between the two
is established.
6. The behaviour of a limb may in the dream incite ideas which
bear some relation or other to this limb. Thus, for example, if we are
using our fingers we dream of numerals.
Results such as these would lead me to conclude that even the theory
of organic stimulation cannot entirely abolish the apparent freedom of
the determination of the dream-picture which will be evoked. *
-
* See below for a further discussion of the two volumes of records
of dreams since published by this writer.
-
4. Psychic sources of excitation
-
When considering the relation of dreams to waking life, and the
provenance of the material of dreams, we learned that the earliest
as well as the most recent investigators are agreed that men dream
of what they do during the day, and of the things that interest them
in the waking state. This interest, continued from waking life into
sleep, is not only a psychic bond, joining the dream to life, but it
is also a source of dreams whose importance must not be
underestimated, and which, taken together with those stimuli which
become active and of interest during sleep, suffices to explain the
origin of all dream-images. Yet we have also heard the very contrary
of this asserted; namely, that dreams bear the sleeper away from the
interests of the day, and that in most cases we do not dream of things
which have occupied our attention during the day until after they have
lost, for our waking life, the stimulating force of belonging to the
present. Hence in the analysis of dream-life we are reminded at
every step that it is inadmissible to frame general rules without
making provision for qualifications by introducing such terms as
"frequently," "as a rule," "in most cases," and without being prepared
to admit the validity of exceptions.
If interest during the waking state together with the internal and
external stimuli that occur during sleep, sufficed to cover the
whole aetiology of dreams, we should be in a position to give a
satisfactory account of the origin of all the elements of a dream; the
problem of the dream-sources would then be solved, leaving us only the
task of discriminating between the part played by the psychic and that
played by the somatic dream-stimuli in individual dreams. But as a
matter of fact no such complete solution of a dream has ever been
achieved in any case, and everyone who has attempted such a solution
has found that components of the dream- and usually a great many of
them- are left whose source he is unable to trace. The interests of
the day as a psychic source of dreams are obviously not so influential
as to justify the confident assertion that every dreamer continues the
activities of his waking life in his dreams.
Other dream-sources of a psychic nature are not known. Hence, with
the exception perhaps of the explanation of dreams given by
Scherner, to which reference will be made later on, all the
explanations found in the literature of the subject show a
considerable hiatus whenever there is a question of tracing the images
and ideas which are the most characteristic material of dreams. In
this dilemma the majority of authors have developed a tendency to
belittle as far as possible the share of the psychic factor, which
is so difficult to determine, in the evocation of dreams. To be
sure, they distinguish as major divisions the nerve-stimulus dream and
the association-dream, and assert that the latter has its source
exclusively in reproduction (Wundt, p. 365), but they cannot dismiss
the doubt as to "whether they appear without any impulsion from
organic stimuli" (Volkelt, p. 127). And even the characteristic
quality of the pure association-dream disappears. To quote Volkelt (p.
118): "In the association-dream proper, there is no longer any
question of such a stable nucleus. Here the loose grouping
penetrates even to the very centre of the dream. The imaginative life,
already released from the control of reason and intellect, is here
no longer held together by the more important psychical and physical
stimuli, but is left to its own uncontrolled and confused
divagations." Wundt, too, attempts to belittle the psychic factor in
the evocation of dreams by asserting that "the phantasms of the
dream are perhaps unjustly regarded as pure hallucinations. Probably
most dream-representations are really illusions, inasmuch as they
emanate from the slight sensory impressions which are never
extinguished during sleep" (p. 359, et seq.). Weygandt has adopted
this view, and generalizes upon it. He asserts that "the most
immediate causes of all dream-representations are sensory stimuli to
which reproductive associations then attach themselves" (p. 17).
Tissie goes still further in suppressing the psychic sources of
excitation (p. 183): "Les reves d'origine absolument psychique
n'existent pas"; * and elsewhere (p. 6), "Les pensees de nos reves
nous viennent de dehors...." *(2)
-
* Dreams do not exist whose origin is totally psychic.
*(2) The thoughts of our dreams come from outside.
-
Those writers who, like the eminent philosopher Wundt, adopt a
middle course, do not hesitate to assert that in most dreams there
is a cooperation of the somatic stimuli and psychic stimuli which
are either unknown or are identified with the interests of the day.
We shall learn later that the problem of dream-formation may be
solved by the disclosure of an entirely unsuspected psychic source
of excitation. In the meanwhile we shall not be surprised at the
over-estimation of the influence of those stimuli which do not
originate in the psychic life. It is not merely because they alone may
easily be found, and even confirmed by experiment, but because the
somatic conception of the origin of dreams entirely corresponds with
the mode of thought prevalent in modern psychiatry. Here, it is
true, the mastery of the brain over the organism is most
emphatically stressed; but everything that might show that the psychic
life is independent of demonstrable organic changes, or spontaneous in
its manifestations, is alarming to the contemporary psychiatrist, as
though such an admission must mean a return to the old-world natural
philosophy and the metaphysical conception of the nature of the
soul. The distrust of the psychiatrist has placed the psyche under
tutelage, so to speak; it requires that none of the impulses of the
psyche shall reveal an autonomous power. Yet this attitude merely
betrays a lack of confidence in the stability of the causal
concatenation between the physical and the psychic. Even where on
investigation the psychic may be recognized as the primary cause of
a phenomenon, a more profound comprehension of the subject will one
day succeed in following up the path that leads to the organic basis
of the psychic. But where the psychic must, in the present state of
our knowledge, be accepted as the terminus, it need not on that
account be disavowed.
D. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking
-
That a dream fades away in the morning is proverbial. It is, indeed,
possible to recall it. For we know the dream, of course, only by
recalling it after waking; but we very often believe that we
remember it incompletely, that during the night there was more of it
than we remember. We may observe how the memory of a dream which in
the morning was still vivid fades in the course of the day, leaving
only a few trifling remnants. We are often aware that we have been
dreaming, but we do not know of what we have dreamed; and we are so
well used to this fact- that the dream is liable to be forgotten- that
we do not reject as absurd the possibility that we may have been
dreaming even when, in the morning, we know nothing either of the
content of the dream or of the fact that we have dreamed. On the other
hand, it often happens that dreams manifest an extraordinary power
of maintaining themselves in the memory. I have had occasion to
analyse, with my patients, dreams which occurred to them twenty-five
years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my own which
is divided from the present day by at least thirty-seven years, and
yet has lost nothing of its freshness in my memory. All this is very
remarkable, and for the present incomprehensible.
The forgetting of dreams is treated in the most detailed manner by
Strumpell. This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon; for
Strumpell attributes it not to a single cause, but to quite a number
of causes.
In the first place, all those factors which induce forgetfulness
in the waking state determine also the forgetting of dreams. In the
waking state we commonly very soon forget a great many sensations
and perceptions because they are too slight to remember, and because
they are charged with only a slight amount of emotional feeling.
This is true also of many dream-images; they are forgotten because
they are too weak, while the stronger images in their neighbourhood
are remembered. However, the factor of intensity is in itself not
the only determinant of the preservation of dream-images; Strumpell,
as well as other authors (Calkins), admits that dream-images are often
rapidly forgotten although they are known to have been vivid, whereas,
among those that are retained in the memory, there are many that are
very shadowy and unmeaning. Besides, in the waking state one is wont
to forget rather easily things that have happened only once, and to
remember more readily things which occur repeatedly. But most
dream-images are unique experiences, * and this peculiarity would
contribute towards the forgetting of all dreams equally. Of much
greater significance is a third cause of forgetting. In order that
feelings, representations, ideas and the like should attain a
certain degree of memorability, it is important that they should not
remain isolated, but that they should enter into connections and
associations of an appropriate nature. If the words of a verse of
poetry are taken and mixed together, it will be very difficult to
remember them. "Properly placed, in a significant sequence, one word
helps another, and the whole, making sense, remains and is easily
and lastingly fixed in the memory. Contradictions, as a rule, are
retained with just as much difficulty and just as rarely as things
that are confused and disorderly." Now dreams, in most cases, lack
sense and order. Dream-compositions, by their very nature, are
insusceptible of being remembered, and they are forgotten because as a
rule they fall to pieces the very next moment. To be sure, these
conclusions are not entirely consistent with Radestock's observation
(p. 168), that we most readily retain just those dreams which are most
peculiar.
-
* Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly.
Compare the collection made by Chabaneix.
-
According to Strumpell, other factors, deriving from the relation of
the dream to the waking state, are even more effective in causing us
to forget our dreams. The forgetfulness of dreams manifested by the
waking consciousness is evidently merely the counterpart of the fact
already mentioned, namely, that the dream hardly ever takes over an
orderly series of memories from the waking state, but only certain
details of these memories, which it removes from the habitual
psychic connections in which they are remembered in the waking
state. The dream-composition, therefore, has no place in the community
of the psychic series which fill the mind. It lacks all mnemonic aids.
"In this manner the dream-structure rises, as it were, from the soil
of our psychic life, and floats in psychic space like a cloud in the
sky, quickly dispelled by the first breath of reawakening life" (p.
87). This situation is accentuated by the fact that on waking the
attention is immediately besieged by the inrushing world of sensation,
so that very few dream-images are capable of withstanding its force.
They fade away before the impressions of the new day like the stars
before the light of the sun.
Finally, we should remember that the fact that most people take
but little interest in their dreams is conducive to the forgetting
of dreams. Anyone who for some time applies himself to the
investigation of dreams, and takes a special interest in them, usually
dreams more during that period than at any other; he remembers his
dreams more easily and more frequently.
Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams, which Bonatelli
(cited by Benini) adds to those adduced by Strumpell, have already
been included in those enumerated above; namely, (1) that the
difference of the general sensation in the sleeping and the waking
state is unfavourable to mutual reproduction, and (2) that the
different arrangement of the material in the dream makes the dream
untranslatable, so to speak, for the waking consciousness.
It is therefore all the more remarkable, as Strumpell himself
observes, that, in spite of all these reasons for forgetting the
dream, so many dreams are retained in the memory. The continual
efforts of those who have written on the subject to formulate laws for
the remembering of dreams amount to an admission that here, too, there
is something puzzling and unexplained. Certain peculiarities
relating to the remembering of dreams have attracted particular
attention of late; for example, the fact that the dream which is
believed to be forgotten in the morning may be recalled in the
course of the day on the occasion of some perception which
accidentally touches the forgotten content of the dream (Radestock,
Tissie). But the whole recollection of dreams is open to an
objection which is calculated greatly to depreciate its value in
critical eyes. One may doubt whether our memory, which omits so much
from the dream, does not falsify what it retains.
This doubt as to the exactness of the reproduction of dreams is
expressed by Strumpell when he says: "It may therefore easily happen
that the waking consciousness involuntarily interpolates a great
many things in the recollection of the dream; one imagines that one
has dreamt all sorts of things which the actual dream did not
contain."
Jessen (p. 547) expresses himself in very decided terms:
"Moreover, we must not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded,
that in the investigation and interpretation of coherent and logical
dreams we almost always take liberties with the truth when we recall a
dream to memory. Unconsciously and unintentionally we fill up the gaps
and supplement the dream-images. Rarely, and perhaps never, has a
connected dream been as connected as it appears to us in memory.
Even the most truth-loving person can hardly relate a dream without
exaggerating and embellishing it in some degree. The human mind so
greatly tends to perceive everything in a connected form that it
intentionally supplies the missing links in any dream which is in some
degree incoherent."
The observations of V. Eggers, though of course independently
conceived, read almost like a translation of Jessen's words:
"...L'observation des reves a ses difficultes speciales et le seul
moyen d'eviter toute erreur en pareille matiere est de confier au
papier sans le moindre retard ce que l'on vient d'eprouver et de
remarquer; sinon, l'oubli vient vite ou total ou partiel; l'oubli
total est sans gravite; mais l'oubli partiel est perfide: car si
l'on se met ensuite a raconter ce que l'on n'a pas oublie, on est
expose a completer par imagination les fragments incoherents et
disjoints fourni par la memoire... on devient artiste a son insu, et
le recit, periodiquement repete s'impose a la creance de son auteur,
qui, de bonne foi, le presente comme un fait authentique, dument
etabli selon les bonnes methodes...." *
-
* ...The observation of dreams has its special difficulties, and the
only way to avoid all error in such matter is to put on paper
without the least delay what has just been experienced and noticed;
otherwise, totally or partially the dream is quickly forgotten;
total forgetting is without seriousness; but partial forgetting is
treacherous: for, if one then starts to recount what has not been
forgotten, one is likely to supplement from the imagination the
incoherent and disjointed fragments provided by the memory....
unconsciously one becomes an artist, and the story, repeated from time
to time, imposes itself on the belief of its author, who, in good
faith, tells it as authentic fact, regularly established according
to proper methods....
-
Similarly Spitta, who seems to think that it is only in the
attempt to reproduce the dream that we bring order and arrangement
into loosely associated dream-elements- "turning juxtaposition into
concatenation; that is, adding the process of logical connection which
is absent in the dream."
Since we can test the reliability of our memory only by objective
means, and since such a test is impossible in the case of dreams,
which are our own personal experience, and for which we know no
other source than our memory, what value do our recollections of our
dreams possess?
E. The Psychological Peculiarities of Dreams
-
In our scientific investigation of dreams we start with the
assumption that dreams are a phenomenon of our own psychic activity;
yet the completed dream appears to us as something alien, whose
authorship we are so little inclined to recognize that we should be
just as willing to say "A dream came to me," as "I dreamed." Whence
this "psychic strangeness" of dreams? According to our exposition of
the sources of dreams, we must assume that it is not determined by the
material which finds its way into the dream-content, since this is for
the most part common both to dream-life and waking life. We might
ask ourselves whether this impression is not evoked by modifications
of the psychic processes in dreams, and we might even attempt to
suggest that the existence of such changes is the psychological
characteristic of dreams.
No one has more strongly emphasized the essential difference between
dream-life and waking life and drawn more far reaching conclusions
from this difference than G. Th. Fechner in certain observations
contained in his Elemente der Psychophysik (Part II, p. 520). He
believes that "neither the simple depression of conscious psychic life
under the main threshold," nor the distraction of the attention from
the influences of the outer world, suffices to explain the
peculiarities of dream-life as compared with waking lif |
|
