Chapter VIII: Literary Index 494 (3)

The authors who in general speak thus unfavourably about the psychic capacities in the dream, nevertheless admit that the dream retains a certain remnant of psychic activity. Wundt,[76] whose teaching has influenced so many other workers in the dream problems, positively admits this. One might inquire as to the kind and behaviour of the remnants of the psychic life which manifest themselves in the dream. It is now quite universally acknowledged that the reproductive capacity, the memory in the dream, seems to have been least affected; indeed it may show a certain superiority over the same function in the waking life (_vid. supra_, p. 10), although a part of the absurdities of the dream are to be explained by just this forgetfulness of the dream life. According to Spitta,[64] it is the emotional life of the psyche that is not overtaken by sleep and that then directs the dream. “By emotion [“Gemüth”] we understand the constant comprehension of the feelings as the inmost subjective essence of man” (p. 84).

Scholz[59] (p. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the dream in the “allegorising interpretation” to which the dream material is subjected. Siebeck[62] verifies also in the dream the “supplementary interpretative activity” (p. 11) which the mind exerts on all that is perceived and viewed. The judgment of the apparently highest psychic function, the consciousness, presents for the dream a special difficulty. As we can know anything only through consciousness, there can be no doubt as to its retention; Spitta, however, believes that only consciousness is retained in the dream, and not self-consciousness. Delbœuf[16] confesses that he is unable to conceive this differentiation.

The laws of association which govern the connection of ideas hold true also for the dream pictures; indeed, their domination evinces itself in a purer and stronger expression in the dream than elsewhere. Strümpell[62] (p. 70) says: “The dream follows either the laws of undisguised presentations as it seems exclusively or organic stimuli along with such presentations, that is, without being influenced by reflection and reason, æsthetic sense, and moral judgment.” The authors whose views I reproduce here conceive the formation of the dream in about the following manner: The sum of sensation stimuli affecting sleep from the various sources, discussed elsewhere, at first awaken in the mind a sum of presentations which represent themselves as hallucinations (according to Wundt, it is more correct to say as illusions, because of their origin from outer and inner stimuli). These unite with one another according to the known laws of association, and, following the same rules, in turn evoke a new series of presentations (pictures). This entire material is then elaborated as well as possible by the still active remnant of the organising and thinking mental faculties (_cf._ Wundt[76] and Weygandt[75]). But thus far no one has been successful in finding the motive which would decide that the awakening of pictures which do not originate objectively follow this or that law of association.

But it has been repeatedly observed that the associations which connect the dream presentations with one another are of a particular kind, and different from those found in the waking mental activity. Thus Volkelt[72] says: “In the dream, the ideas chase and hunt each other on the strength of accidental similarities and barely perceptible connections. All dreams are pervaded by such loose and free associations.” Maury[48] attaches great value to this characteristic of connection between presentations, which allows him to bring the dream life in closer analogy to certain mental disturbances. He recognises two main characters of the _délire_: “(1) une action spontanée et comme automatique de l’esprit; (2) une association vicieuse et irregulière des idées” (p. 126). Maury gives us two excellent examples from his own dreams, in which the mere similarity of sound forms the connection of the dream presentations. He dreamed once that he undertook a pilgrimage (_pélerinage_) to Jerusalem or Mecca. After many adventures he was with the chemist Pelletier; the latter after some talk gave him a zinc shovel (_pelle_) which became his long battle sword in the dream fragment which followed (p. 137). On another occasion he walked in a dream on the highway and read the kilometres on the milestones; presently he was with a spice merchant who had large scales with which to weigh Maury; the spice merchant then said to him: “You are not in Paris; but on the island Gilolo.” This was followed by many pictures, in which he saw the flower Lobelia, then the General Lopez, of whose demise he had read shortly before. He finally awoke while playing a game of lotto.

We are, however, quite prepared to hear that this depreciation of the psychic activities of the dream has not remained without contradiction from the other side. To be sure, contradiction seems difficult here. Nor is it of much significance that one of the depreciators of dream life, Spitta[64] (p. 118), assures us that the same psychological laws which govern the waking state rule the dream also, or that another (Dugas[19]) states: “Le rêve n’est pas déraison ni même irraison pure,” as long as neither of them has made any effort to bring this estimation into harmony with the psychic anarchy and dissolution of all functions in the dream described by them. Upon others, however, the possibility seems to have dawned that the madness of the dream is perhaps not without its method—that it is perhaps only a sham, like that of the Danish prince, to whose madness the intelligent judgment here cited refers. These authors must have refrained from judging by appearances, or the appearance which the dream showed to them was quite different.

Without wishing to linger at its apparent absurdity, Havelock Ellis[23] considers the dream as “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” the study of which may make us acquainted with primitive stages of development of the psychic life. A thinker like Delbœuf[16] asserts—to be sure without adducing proof against the contradictory material, and hence indeed unjustly: “Dans le sommeil, hormis la perception, toutes les facultés de l’esprit, intelligence, imagination, mémoire, volonté, moralité, restant intactes dans leur essence; seulement, elles s’appliquent à des objets imaginaires et mobiles. Le songeur est un acteur qui joue à volonté les fous et les sages, les bourreaux et les victimes, les nains et les géants, les démons et les anges” (p. 222). The Marquis of Hervey, who is sharply controverted by Maury,[48] and whose work I could not obtain despite all effort, seems to combat most energetically the under-estimation of the psychic capacity in the dream. Maury speaks of him as follows (p. 19): “M. le Marquis d’Hervey prête à l’intelligence, durant le sommeil toute sa liberté d’action et d’attention et il ne semble faire consister le sommeil que dans l’occlusion des sens, dans leur fermeture au monde extérieur; en sorte que l’homme qui dort ne se distingué guère, selon sa manière de voir, de l’homme qui laisse vaguer sa pensée en se bouchant les sens; toute la différence qui séparé alors la pensée ordinaire du celle du dormeur c’est que, chez celui-ci, l’idée prend une forme visible, objective et ressemble, à s’y méprendre, à la sensation déterminée par les objets extérieurs; le souvenir revêt l’apparence du fait présent.”

Maury adds, however; “Qu’il y a une différence de plus et capitale à savoir que les facultés intellectuelles de l’homme endormi n’offrent pas l’équilibre qu’elles gardent chez l’homme l’éveillé.”

The scale of the estimation of the dream as a psychic product has a great range in the literature; it reaches from the lowest under-estimation, the expression of which we have come to know, through the idea of a value not yet revealed to the over-estimation which places the dream far above the capacities of the waking life. Hildebrandt,[35] who, as we know, sketches the psychological characteristics into three antinomies, sums up in the third of these contradistinctions the extreme points of this series as follows (p. 19): “It is between a climax, often an involution which raises itself to virtuosity, and on the other hand a decided diminution and weakening of the psychic life often leading below the human niveau.”

“As for the first, who could not confirm from his own experience that, in the creations and weavings of the genius of the dream, there sometimes comes to light a profundity and sincerity of emotion, a tenderness of feeling, a clearness of view, a fineness of observation, and a readiness of wit, all which we should modestly have to deny that we possess as a constant property during the waking life? The dream has a wonderful poetry, an excellent allegory, an incomparable humour, and a charming irony. It views the world under the guise of a peculiar idealisation, and often raises the effect of its manifestations into the most ingenious understanding of the essence lying at its basis. It represents for us earthly beauty in true heavenly radiance, the sublime in the highest majesty, the actually frightful in the most gruesome figure, and the ridiculous in the indescribably drastic comical; and at times we are so full of one of these impressions after awakening that we imagine that such a thing has never been offered to us by the real world.”

One may ask, is it really the same object that the depreciating remarks and these inspired praises are meant for? Have the latter overlooked the stupid dreams and the former the thoughtful and ingenious dreams? And if both kinds do occur—that is, dreams that merit to be judged in this or that manner—does it not seem idle to seek the psychological character of the dream? Would it not suffice to state that everything is possible in the dream, from the lowest depreciation of the psychic life to a raising of the same which is unusual in the waking state? As convenient as this solution would be it has this against it, that behind the efforts of all dream investigators, it seems to be presupposed that there is such a definable character of the dream, which is universally valid in its essential features and which must eliminate these contradictions.

It is unquestionable that the psychic capacities of the dream have found quicker and warmer recognition in that intellectual period which now lies behind us, when philosophy rather than exact natural science ruled intelligent minds. Utterances like those of Schubert, that the dream frees the mind from the power of outer nature, that it liberates the soul from the chains of the sensual, and similar opinions expressed by the younger Fichte,[M] and others, who represent the dream as a soaring up of the psychic life to a higher stage, hardly seem conceivable to us to-day; they are only repeated at present by mystics and devotees. With the advance of the scientific mode of thinking, a reaction took place in the estimation of the dream. It is really the medical authors who are most prone to underrate the psychic activity in the dream, as being insignificant and invaluable, whereas, philosophers and unprofessional observers—amateur psychologists—whose contributions in this realm can surely not be overlooked, in better agreement with the popular ideas, have mostly adhered to the psychic value of the dream. He who is inclined to underrate the psychic capacity in the dream prefers, as a matter of course, the somatic exciting sources in the etiology of the dream; he who leaves to the dreaming mind the greater part of its capacities, naturally has no reason for not also admitting independent stimuli for dreaming.

Among the superior activities which, even on sober comparison, one is tempted to ascribe to the dream life, memory is the most striking; we have fully discussed the frequent experiences which prove this fact. Another superiority of the dream life, frequently extolled by the old authors, viz. that it can regard itself supreme in reference to distance of time and space, can be readily recognised as an illusion. This superiority, as observed by Hildebrandt,[35] is only illusional; the dream takes as much heed of time and space as the waking thought, and this because it is only a form of thinking. The dream is supposed to enjoy still another advantage in reference to time; that is, it is independent in still another sense of the passage of time. Dreams like the guillotine dream of Maury,[48] reported above, seem to show that the dream can crowd together more perception content in a very short space of time than can be controlled by our psychic activity in the waking mind. These conclusions have been controverted, however, by many arguments; the essays of Le Lorrain[45] and Egger[20] “Concerning the apparent duration of dreams” gave rise to a long and interesting discussion which has probably not said the last word upon this delicate and far-reaching question.

That the dream has the ability to take up the intellectual work of the day and bring to a conclusion what has not been settled during the day, that it can solve doubt and problems, and that it may become the source of new inspiration in poets and composers, seems to be indisputable, as is shown by many reports and by the collection compiled by Chabaneix.[11] But even if there be no dispute as to the facts, nevertheless their interpretation is open in principle to a great many doubts.

Finally the asserted divinatory power of the dream forms an object of contention in which hard unsurmountable reflection encounters obstinate and continued faith. It is indeed just that we should refrain from denying all that is based on fact in this subject, as there is a possibility that a number of such cases may perhaps be explained on a natural psychological basis.

(_f_) _The Ethical Feelings in the Dream._—For reasons which will be understood only after cognisance has been taken of my own investigations of the dream, I have separated from the psychology of the dream the partial problem whether and to what extent the moral dispositions and feelings of the waking life extend into the dreams. The same contradictions which we were surprised to observe in the authors’ descriptions of all the other psychic capacities strike us again here. Some affirm decidedly that the dream knows nothing of moral obligations; others as decidedly that the moral nature of man remains even in his dream life.

A reference to our dream experience of every night seems to raise the correctness of the first assertion beyond doubt. Jessen[36] says (p. 553): “Nor does one become better or more virtuous in the dream; on the contrary, it seems that conscience is silent in the dream, inasmuch as one feels no compassion and can commit the worst crimes, such as theft, murder, and assassination, with perfect indifference and without subsequent remorse.”

Radestock[54] (p. 146) says: “It is to be noticed that in the dream the associations terminate and the ideas unite without being influenced by reflection and reason, æsthetic taste, and moral judgment; the judgment is extremely weak, and ethical indifference reigns supreme.”

Volkelt[72] (p. 23) expresses himself as follows: “As every one knows, the sexual relationship in the dream is especially unbridled. Just as the dreamer himself is shameless in the extreme, and wholly lacking moral feeling and judgment, so also he sees others, even the most honoured persons, engaged in actions which even in thought he would blush to associate with them in his waking state.”

Utterances like those of Schopenhauer, that in the dream every person acts and talks in accordance with his character, form the sharpest contrast to those mentioned above. R. P. Fischer[N] maintains that the subjective feelings and desires or affects and passions manifest themselves in the wilfulness of the dream life, and that the moral characteristics of a person are mirrored in his dream.

Haffner[32] (p. 25): “With rare exceptions ... a virtuous person will be virtuous also in his dreams; he will resist temptation, and show no sympathy for hatred, envy, anger, and all other vices; while the sinful person will, as a rule, also find in his dreams the pictures which he has before him while awake.”

Scholz[59] (p. 36): “In the dream there is truth; despite all masking in pride or humility, we still recognise our own self.... The honest man does not commit any dishonourable offence even in the dream, or, if this does occur, he is terrified over it as if over something foreign to his nature. The Roman emperor who ordered one of his subjects to be executed because he dreamed that he cut off the emperor’s head, was not wrong in justifying his action on the ground that he who has such dreams must have similar thoughts while awake. About a thing that can have no place in our mind we therefore say significantly: ‘I would never dream of such a thing.’”

Pfaff,[O] varying a familiar proverb, says: “Tell me for a time your dreams, and I will tell you what you are within.”

The short work of Hildebrandt,[35] from which I have already taken so many quotations, a contribution to the dream problem as complete and as rich in thought as I found in the literature, places the problem of morality in the dream as the central point of its interest. For Hildebrandt, too, it is a strict rule that the purer the life, the purer the dream; the impurer the former, the impurer the latter.

The moral nature of man remains even in the dream: “But while we are not offended nor made suspicious by an arithmetical error no matter how obvious, by a reversal of science no matter how romantic, or by an anachronism no matter how witty, we nevertheless do not lose sight of the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice. No matter how much of what follows us during the day may vanish in our hours of sleep—Kant’s categorical imperative sticks to our heels as an inseparable companion from whom we cannot rid ourselves even in slumber.... This can be explained, however, only by the fact that the fundamental in human nature, the moral essence, is too firmly fixed to take part in the activity of the kaleidoscopic shaking up to which phantasy, reason, memory, and other faculties of the same rank succumb in the dream” (p. 45, &c.).

In the further discussion of the subject we find remarkable distortion and inconsequence in both groups of authors. Strictly speaking, interest in immoral dreams would cease for all those who assert that the moral personality of the person crumbles away in the dream. They could just as calmly reject the attempt to hold the dreamer responsible for his dreams, and to draw inferences from the badness of his dreams as to an evil strain in his nature, as they rejected the apparently similar attempt to demonstrate the insignificance of his intellectual life in the waking state from the absurdity of his dreams. The others for whom “the categorical imperative” extends also into the dream, would have to accept full responsibility for the immoral dreams; it would only be desirable for their own sake that their own objectionable dreams should not lead them to abandon the otherwise firmly held estimation of their own morality.

Still it seems that no one knows exactly about himself how good or how bad he is, and that no one can deny the recollection of his own immoral dreams. For besides the opposition already mentioned in the criticism of the morality of the dream, both groups of authors display an effort to explain the origin of the immoral dream and a new opposition is developed, depending on whether their origin is sought in the functions of the psychic life or in the somatically determined injuries to this life. The urgent force of the facts then permits the representatives of the responsibility, as well as of the irresponsibility of the dream life, to agree in the recognition of a special psychic source for the immorality of dreams.

All those who allow the continuance of the morality in the dream nevertheless guard against accepting full responsibility for their dreams. Haffner[32] says (p. 24): “We are not responsible for dreams because the basis upon which alone our life has truth and reality is removed from our thoughts.... Hence there can be no dream wishing and dream acting, no virtue or sin.” Still the person is responsible for the sinful dream in so far as he brings it about indirectly. Just as in the waking state, it is his duty to cleanse his moral mind, particularly so before retiring to sleep.

The analysis of this mixture of rejection and recognition of responsibility for the moral content of the dream is followed much further by Hildebrandt. After specifying that the dramatic manner of representation in the dream, the crowding together of the most complicated processes of deliberation in the briefest period of time, and the depreciation and the confusion of the presentation elements in the dream admitted by him must be recognised as unfavourable to the immoral aspect of dreams; he nevertheless confesses that, yielding to the most earnest reflection, he is inclined simply to deny all responsibility for faults and dream sins.

(P. 49): “If we wish to reject very decisively any unjust accusation, especially one that has reference to our intentions and convictions, we naturally make use of the expression: I should never have dreamed of such a thing. By this we mean to say, of course, that we consider the realm of the dream the last and remotest place in which we are to be held responsible for our thoughts, because there these thoughts are only loosely and incoherently connected with our real being, so that we should hardly still consider them as our own; but as we feel impelled expressly to deny the existence of such thoughts, even in this realm, we thus at the same time indirectly admit that our justification will not be complete if it does not reach to that point. And I believe that, though unconsciously, we here speak the language of truth.”

(P. 52): “No dream thought can be imagined whose first motive has not already moved through the mind while awake as some wish, desire, or impulse.” Concerning this original impulse we must say that the dream has not discovered it—it has only imitated and extended it, it has only elaborated a bit of historical material which it has found in us, into dramatic form; it enacts the words of the apostle: He who hates his brother is a murderer. And whereas, after we awaken and become conscious of our moral strength, we may smile at the boldly executed structure of the depraved dream, the original formative material, nevertheless, has no ridiculous side. One feels responsible for the transgressions of the dreamer, not for the whole sum, but still for a certain percentage. “In this sense, which is difficult to impugn, we understand the words of Christ: Out of the heart come evil thoughts—for we can hardly help being convinced that every sin committed in the dream brings with it at least a vague minimum of guilt.”

Hildebrandt thus finds the source of the immorality of dreams in the germs and indications of evil impulses which pass through our minds during the day as tempting thoughts, and he sees fit to add these immoral elements to the moral estimation of the personality. It is the same thoughts and the same estimation of these thoughts, which, as we know, have caused devout and holy men of all times to lament that they are evil sinners.

There is certainly no reason to doubt the general occurrence of these contrasting presentations—in most men and even also in other than ethical spheres. The judgment of these at times has not been very earnest. In Spitta[64] we find the following relevant expression from A. Zeller (Article “Irre” in the _Allgemeinen Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften_ of Ersch and Grüber, p. 144): “The mind is rarely so happily organised as to possess at all times power enough not to be disturbed, not only by unessential but also by perfectly ridiculous ideas running counter to the usual clear trend of thought; indeed, the greatest thinkers have had cause to complain of this dreamlike disturbing and painful rabble of ideas, as it destroys their profoundest reflection and their most sacred and earnest mental work.”

A clearer light is thrown on the psychological status of this idea of contrast by another observation of Hildebrandt, that the dream at times allows us to glance into the deep and inmost recesses of our being, which are generally closed to us in our waking state (p. 55). The same knowledge is revealed by Kant in his _Anthropology_, when he states that the dream exists in order to lay bare for us our hidden dispositions and to reveal to us not what we are, but what we might have been if we had a different education. Radestock[54] (p. 84) says that the dream often only reveals to us what we do not wish to admit to ourselves, and that we therefore unjustly condemn it as a liar and deceiver. That the appearance of impulses which are foreign to our consciousness is merely analogous to the already familiar disposition which the dream makes of other material of the presentation, which is either absent or plays only an insignificant part in the waking state, has been called to our attention by observations like those of Benini,[3] who says: “Certe nostre inclinazione che si credevano soffocate a spente da un pezzo, si ridestano; passioni vecchie e sepolte rivivono; cose e persone a cui non pensiamo mai, ci vengono dinanzi” (p. 149). Volkelt[72] expresses himself in a similar way: “Even presentations which have entered into our consciousness almost unnoticed, and have never perhaps been brought out from oblivion, often announce through the dream their presence in the mind” (p. 105). Finally, it is not out of place to mention here that, according to Schleiermacher,[61] the state of falling asleep is accompanied by the appearance of undesirable presentations (pictures).

We may comprise under “undesirable presentations” this entire material of presentations, the occurrence of which excites our wonder in immoral as well as in absurd dreams. The only important difference consists in the fact that our undesirable presentations in the moral sphere exhibit an opposition to our other feelings, whereas the others simply appear strange to us. Nothing has been done so far to enable us to remove this difference through a more penetrating knowledge.

But what is the significance of the appearance of undesirable presentations in the dream? What inferences may be drawn for the psychology of the waking and dreaming mind from these nocturnal manifestations of contrasting ethical impulses? We may here note a new diversity of opinion, and once more a different grouping of the authors. The stream of thought followed by Hildebrandt, and by others who represent his fundamental view, cannot be continued in any other way than by ascribing to the immoral impulses a certain force even in the waking state, which, to be sure, is inhibited from advancing to action, and asserting that something falls off during sleep, which, having the effect of an inhibition, has kept us from noticing the existence of such an impulse. The dream thus shows the real, if not the entire nature of man, and is a means of making the hidden psychic life accessible to our understanding. It is only on such assumption that Hildebrandt can attribute to the dream the rôle of monitor who calls our attention to the moral ravages in the soul, just as in the opinion of physicians it can announce a hitherto unobserved physical ailment. Spitta,[64] too, cannot be guided by any other conception when he refers to the stream of excitement which, _e.g._, flows in upon the psyche during puberty, and consoles the dreamer by saying that he has done everything in his power when he has led a strictly virtuous life during his waking state, when he has made an effort to suppress the sinful thoughts as often as they arise, and has kept them from maturing and becoming actions. According to this conception, we might designate the “undesirable” presentations as those that are “suppressed” during the day, and must recognise in their appearance a real psychic phenomenon.

If we followed other authors we would have no right to the last inference. For Jessen[36] the undesirable presentations in the dream as in the waking state, in fever and other deliria, merely have “the character of a voluntary activity put to rest and a somewhat mechanical process of pictures and presentations produced by inner impulses” (p. 360). An immoral dream proves nothing for the psychic life of the dreamer except that he has in some way become cognizant of the ideas in question; it is surely not a psychic impulse of his own. Another author, Maury,[48] makes us question whether he, too, does not attribute to the dream state the capacity for dividing the psychic activity into its components instead of destroying it aimlessly. He speaks as follows about dreams in which one goes beyond the bounds of morality: “Ce sont nos penchants qui parlent et qui nous font agir, sans que la conscience nous retienne, bien que parfois elle nous avertisse. J’ai mes défauts et mes penchants vicieux; à l’état de veille, je tache de lutter contre eux, et il m’arrive assez souvent de n’y pas succomber. Mais dans mes songes j’y succombe toujours ou pour mieux dire j’agis, par leur impulsion, sans crainte et sans remords.... Évidemment les visions qui se déroulent devant ma pensée et qui constituent le rêve, me sont suggérées par les incitations que je ressens et que ma volonté absente ne cherche pas à refouler” (p. 113).

If one believes in the capacity of the dream to reveal an actually existing but repressed or concealed immoral disposition of the dreamer, he could not emphasize his opinion more strongly than with the words of Maury (p. 115): “En rêve l’homme se révèle donc tout entier à soi-même dans sa nudité et sa misère natives. Dès qu’il suspend l’exercice de sa volonté, il dévient le jouet de toutes les passions contre lesquelles, à l’état de veille, la conscience, le sentiment d’honneur, la crainte nous défendent.” In another place he finds the following striking words (p. 462): “Dans le rêve, c’est surtout l’homme instinctif que se révèle.... L’homme revient pour ainsi dire à l’état de nature quand il rêve; mais moins les idées acquises ont pénétré dans son esprit, plus les penchants en désaccord avec elles conservent encore sur lui d’influence dans le rêve.” He then mentions as an example that his dreams often show him as a victim of just those superstitions which he most violently combats in his writing.

The value of all these ingenious observations for a psychological knowledge of the dream life, however, is marred by Maury through the fact that he refuses to recognise in the phenomena so correctly observed by him any proof of the “automatisme psychologique” which in his opinion dominates the dream life. He conceives this automatism as a perfect contrast to the psychic activity.

A passage in the studies on consciousness by Stricker[77] reads: “The dream does not consist of delusions merely; if, _e.g._, one is afraid of robbers in the dream, the robbers are, of course, imaginary, but the fear is real. One’s attention is thus called to the fact that the effective development in the dream does not admit of the judgment which one bestows upon the rest of the dream content, and the problem arises what part of the psychic processes in the dream may be real, _i.e._ what part of them may demand to be enrolled among the psychic processes of the waking state?”

(_g_) _Dream Theories and Functions of the Dream._—A statement concerning the dream which as far as possible attempts to explain from one point of view many of its noted characters, and which at the same time determines the relation of the dream to a more comprehensive sphere of manifestations, may be called a theory of dreams. Individual theories of the dream will be distinguished from one another through the fact that they raise to prominence this or that characteristic of the dream, and connect explanations and relations with it. It will not be absolutely necessary to derive from the theory a function, _i.e._ a use or any such activity of the dream, but our expectation, which is usually adjusted to teleology, will nevertheless welcome those theories which promise an understanding of the function of the dream.

We have already become acquainted with many conceptions of the dream which, more or less, merit the name of dream theories in this sense. The belief of the ancients that the dream was sent by the gods in order to guide the actions of man was a complete theory of the dream giving information concerning everything in the dream worth knowing. Since the dream has become an object of biological investigation we have a greater number of theories, of which, however, some are very incomplete.

If we waive completeness, we may attempt the following loose grouping of dream theories based on their fundamental conception of the degree and mode of the psychic activity in the dream:—

1. Theories, like those of Delbœuf,[16] which allow the full psychic activity of the waking state to continue into the dream. Here the mind does not sleep; its apparatus remains intact, and, being placed under the conditions different from the waking state, it must in normal activity furnish results different from those of the waking state. In these theories it is a question whether they are in position to derive the distinctions between dreaming and waking thought altogether from the determinations of the sleeping state. They moreover lack a possible access to a function of the dream; one cannot understand why one dreams, why the complicated mechanism of the psychic apparatus continues to play even when it is placed under conditions for which it is not apparently adapted. There remain only two expedient reactions—to sleep dreamlessly or to awake when approached by disturbing stimuli—instead of the third, that of dreaming.

2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the dream a diminution for the psychic activity, a loosening of the connections, and an impoverishment in available material. In accordance with these theories, one must assume for sleep a psychological character entirely different from the one given by Delbœuf. Sleep extends far beyond the mind—it does not consist merely in a shutting off of the mind from the outer world; on the contrary, it penetrates into its mechanism, causing it at times to become useless. If I may draw a comparison from psychiatrical material, I may say that the first theories construct the dream like a paranoia, while the second make it after the model of a dementia or an amentia.

The theory that only a fragment of the psychic activity paralysed by sleep comes to expression is by far the favourite among the medical writers and in the scientific world. As far as one may presuppose a more general interest in dream interpretation, it may well be designated as the ruling theory of the dream. It is to be emphasized with what facility this particular theory escapes the worst rock threatening every dream interpretation, that is to say, being shipwrecked upon one of the contrasts embodied in the dream. As this theory considers the dream the result of a partial waking (or as Herbart’s _Psychology_ of the dream says, “a gradual, partial, and at the same time very anomalous waking”), it succeeds in covering the entire series of inferior activities in the dream which reveal themselves in its absurdities, up to the full concentration of mental activity, by following a series of states which become more and more awake until they reach full awakening.

One who finds the psychological mode of expression indispensable, or who thinks more scientifically, will find this theory of the dream expressed in the discussion of Binz[4] (p. 43):—

“This state [of numbness], however, gradually approaches its end in the early morning hours. The accumulated material of fatigue in the albumen of the brain gradually becomes less. It is gradually decomposed or carried away by the constantly flowing circulation. Here and there some masses of cells can be distinguished as awake, while all around everything still remains in a state of torpidity. _The isolated work of the individual groups_ now appears before our clouded consciousness, which lacks the control of other parts of the brain governing the associations. Hence the pictures created, which mostly correspond to the objective impressions of the recent past, fit with each other in a wild and irregular manner. The number of the brain cells set free becomes constantly greater, the irrationality of the dream constantly less.”

The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial waking state, or traces of its influence, can surely be found among all modern physiologists and philosophers. It is most completely represented by Maury.[48] It often seems as if this author represented to himself the state of being awake or asleep in anatomical regions; at any rate it appears to him that an anatomical province is connected with a definite psychic function. I may here merely mention that if the theory of partial waking could be confirmed, there would remain much to be accomplished in its elaboration.

Naturally a function of the dream cannot be found in this conception of the dream life. On the contrary, the criticism of the status and importance of the dream is consistently uttered in this statement of Binz (p. 357): “All the facts, as we see, urge us to characterise the dream as a physical process in all cases useless, in many cases even morbid.”

The expression “physical” in reference to the dream, which owes its prominence to this author, points in more than one direction. In the first place, it refers to the etiology of the dream, which was especially clear to Binz, as he studied the experimental production of dreams by the administration of poisons. It is certainly in keeping with this kind of dream theory to ascribe the incitement of the dream exclusively to somatic origin whenever possible. Presented in the most extreme form, it reads as follows: After we have put ourselves to sleep by removing the stimuli, there would be no need and no occasion for dreaming until morning, when the gradual awakening through the incoming stimuli would be reflected in the phenomenon of dreaming. But as a matter of fact, it is not possible to keep sleep free from stimuli; just as Mephisto complains about the germs of life, so stimuli reach the sleeper from every side—from without, from within, and even from certain bodily regions which never give us any concern during the waking state. Thus sleep is disturbed; the mind is aroused, now by this, now by that little thing, and functionates for a while with the awakened part only to be glad to fall asleep again. The dream is a reaction to the stimulus causing a disturbance of sleep—to be sure, it is a purely superfluous reaction.

To designate the dream as a physical process, which for all that remains an activity of the mental organ, has still another sense. It is meant to dispute the dignity of a psychic process for the dream. The application to the dream of the very old comparison of the “ten fingers of a musically ignorant person running over the keyboard of an instrument,” perhaps best illustrates in what estimation the dream activity has been held by the representatives of exact science. In this sense it becomes something entirely untranslatable, for how could the ten fingers of an unmusical player produce any music?

The theory of partial wakefulness has not passed without objection even in early times. Thus Burdach,[8] in 1830, says: “If we say that the dream is a partial wakefulness, in the first place, we explain thereby neither the waking nor the sleeping state; secondly, this expresses nothing more than that certain forces of the mind are active in the dream while others are at rest. But such irregularities take place throughout life....” (p. 483).

Among extant dream theories which consider the dream a “physical” process, there is one very interesting conception of the dream, first propounded by Robert[55] in 1866, which is attractive because it assigns to the dream a function or a useful end. As a basis for this theory, Robert takes from observation two facts which we have already discussed in our consideration of the dream material (see p. 13). These facts are: that one very often dreams about the insignificant impressions of the day, and that one rarely carries over into the dream the absorbing interests of the day. Robert asserts as exclusively correct, that things which have been fully settled never become dream inciters, but only such things as are incomplete in the mind or touch it fleetingly (p. 11). “We cannot usually explain our dreams because their causes are to be found _in sensory impressions of the preceding day which have not attained sufficient recognition by the dreamer_.” The conditions allowing an impression to reach the dream are therefore, either that this impression has been disturbed in its elaboration, or that being too insignificant it has no claim to such elaboration.

Robert therefore conceives the dream “as a physical process of elimination which has reached to cognition in the psychic manifestation of its reaction.” _Dreams are eliminations of thoughts nipped in the bud._ “A man deprived of the capacity for dreaming would surely in time become mentally unbalanced, because an immense number of unfinished and unsolved thoughts and superficial impressions would accumulate in his brain, under the pressure of which there would be crushed all that should be incorporated as a finished whole into memory.” The dream acts as a safety-valve for the overburdened brain. _Dreams possess healing and unburdening properties_ (p. 32).

It would be a mistake to ask Robert how representation in the dream can bring about an unburdening of the mind. The author apparently concluded from those two peculiarities of the dream material that during sleep such ejection of worthless impressions is effected as a somatic process, and that dreaming is not a special psychic process but only the knowledge that we receive of such elimination. To be sure an elimination is not the only thing that takes place in the mind during sleep. Robert himself adds that the incitements of the day are also elaborated, and “what cannot be eliminated from the undigested thought material lying in the mind becomes connected _by threads of thought borrowed from the phantasy into a finished whole_, and thus enrolled in the memory as a harmless phantasy picture” (p. 23).

But it is in his criticism of the dream sources that Robert appears most bluntly opposed to the ruling theory. Whereas according to the existing theory there would be no dream if the outer and inner sensory stimuli did not repeatedly wake the mind, according to Robert the impulse to dream lies in the mind itself. It lies in the overcharging which demands discharge, and Robert judges with perfect consistency when he maintains that the causes determining the dream which depend on the physical state assume a subordinate rank, and could not incite dreams in a mind containing no material for dream formation taken from waking consciousness. It is admitted, however, that the phantasy pictures originating in the depths of the mind can be influenced by the nervous stimuli (p. 48). Thus, according to Robert, the dream is not quite so dependent on the somatic element. To be sure, it is not a psychic process, and has no place among the psychic processes of the waking state; it is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus devoted to mental activity, and has a function to perform, viz. to guard this apparatus against overstraining, or, if the comparison may be changed, to cleanse the mind.

Another author, Yves Delage,[15] bases his theory on the same characteristics of the dream, which become clear in the selection of the dream material, and it is instructive to observe how a slight turn in the conception of the same things gives a final result of quite different bearing.

Delage, after having lost through death a person very dear to him, found from his own experience that we do not dream of what occupies us intently during the day, or that we begin to dream of it only after it is overshadowed by other interests of the day. His investigations among other persons corroborated the universality of this state of affairs. Delage makes a nice observation of this kind, if it turns out to be generally true, about the dreaming of newly married people: “S’ils ont été fortement épris, presque jamais ils n’ont rêve l’un de l’autre avant le mariage ou pendant la lune de miel; et s’ils ont rêve d’amour c’est pour être infidèles avec quelque personne indifférente ou odieuse.” But what does one dream of? Delage recognises that the material occurring in our dreams consists of fragments and remnants of impressions from the days preceding and former times. All that appears in our dreams, what at first we may be inclined to consider creations of the dream life, proves on more thorough investigation to be unrecognised reproductions, “souvenir inconscient.” But this presentation material shows a common character; it originates from impressions which have probably affected our senses more forcibly than our mind, or from which the attention has been deflected soon after their appearance. The less conscious, and at the same time the stronger the impression, the more prospect it has of playing a part in the next dream.

These are essentially the same two categories of impressions, the insignificant and the unadjusted, which were emphasized by Robert,[55] but Delage changes the connection by assuming that these impressions become the subject of dreams, not because they are indifferent, but because they are unadjusted. The insignificant impressions, too, are in a way not fully adjusted; they, too, are from their nature as new impressions “autant de ressorts tendus,” which will be relaxed during sleep. Still more entitled to a rôle in the dream than the weak and almost unnoticed impression is a strong impression which has been accidentally detained in its elaboration or intentionally repressed. The psychic energy accumulated during the day through inhibition or suppression becomes the mainspring of the dream at night.

Unfortunately Delage stops here in his train of thought; he can ascribe only the smallest part to an independent psychic activity in the dream, and thus in his dream theory reverts to the ruling doctrine of a partial sleep of the brain: “En somme le rêve est le produit de la pensée errante, sans but et sans direction, se fixant successivement sur les souvenirs, qui ont gardé assez d’intensité pour se placer sur sa route et l’arrêter au passage, établissant entre eux un lien tantôt faible et indécis, tantôt plus fort et plus serré, selon que l’activité actuelle du cerveau est plus ou moins abolie par le sommeil.”

In a third group we may include those dream theories which ascribe to the dreaming mind the capacity and propensity for a special psychic activity, which in the waking state it can accomplish either not at all or only in an imperfect manner. From the activity of these capacities there usually results a useful function of the dream. The dignity bestowed upon the dream by older psychological authors falls chiefly in this category. I shall content myself, however, with quoting, in their place, the assertions of Burdach,[8] by virtue of which the dream “is the natural activity of the mind, which is not limited by the force of the individuality, not disturbed by self-consciousness and not directed by self-determination, but is the state of life of the sensible central point indulging in free play” (p. 486).

Burdach and others apparently consider this revelling in the free use of one’s own powers as a state in which the mind refreshes itself and takes on new strength for the day work, something after the manner of a vacation holiday. Burdach, therefore, cites with approval the admirable words in which the poet Novalis lauds the sway of the dream: “The dream is a bulwark against the regularity and commonness of life, a free recreation of the fettered phantasy, in which it mixes together all the pictures of life and interrupts the continued earnestness of grown-up men with a joyous children’s play. Without the dream we should surely age earlier, and thus the dream may be considered perhaps not a gift directly from above, but a delightful task, a friendly companion, on our pilgrimage to the grave.”

The refreshing and curative activity of the dream is even more impressively depicted by Purkinje.[53] “The productive dreams in particular would perform these functions. They are easy plays of the imagination, which have no connection with the events of the day. The mind does not wish to continue the tension of the waking life, but to release it and recuperate from it. It produces, in the first place, conditions opposed to those of the waking state. It cures sadness through joy, worry through hope and cheerfully distracting pictures, hatred through love and friendliness, and fear through courage and confidence; it calms doubt through conviction and firm belief, and vain expectations through realisation. Many sore spots in the mind, which the day keeps continually open, sleep heals by covering them and guarding against fresh excitement. Upon this the curative effect of time is partially based.” We all feel that sleep is beneficial to the psychic life, and the vague surmise of the popular consciousness apparently cannot be robbed of the notion that the dream is one of the ways in which sleep distributes its benefits.

The most original and most far-reaching attempt to explain the dream as a special activity of the mind, which can freely display itself only in the sleeping state, was the one undertaken by Scherner[58] in 1861. Scherner’s book, written in a heavy and bombastic style, inspired by an almost intoxicated enthusiasm for the subject, which must repel us unless it can carry us away with it, places so many difficulties in the way of an analysis that we gladly resort to the clearer and shorter description in which the philosopher Volkelt[72] presents Scherner’s theories: “From the mystic conglomerations and from all the gorgeous and magnificent billows there indeed flashes and irradiates an ominous light of sense, but the path of the philosopher does not thereby become clearer.” Such is the criticism of Scherner’s description from one of his own adherents.

Scherner does not belong to those authors who allow the mind to take along its undiminished capacities into the dream life. He indeed explains how in the dream the centrality and the spontaneous energy of the ego are enervated, how cognition, feeling, will, and imagination become changed through this decentralisation, and how no true mental character, but only the nature of a mechanism, belongs to the remnants of these psychic forces. But instead, the activity of the mind designated as phantasy, freed from all rational domination and hence completely uncontrolled, rises in the dream to absolute supremacy. To be sure, it takes the last building stones from the memory of the waking state, but it builds with them constructions as different from the structures of the waking state as day and night. It shows itself in the dream not only reproductive, but productive. Its peculiarities give to the dream life its strange character. It shows a preference for the unlimited, exaggerated, and prodigious, but because freed from the impeding thought categories, it gains a greater flexibility and agility and new pleasure; it is extremely sensitive to the delicate emotional stimuli of the mind and to the agitating affects, and it rapidly recasts the inner life into the outer plastic clearness. The dream phantasy lacks the language of ideas; what it wishes to say, it must clearly depict; and as the idea now acts strongly, it depicts it with the richness, force, and immensity of the mode in question. Its language, however simple it may be, thus becomes circumstantial, cumbersome, and heavy. Clearness of language is rendered especially difficult by the fact that it shows a dislike for expressing an object by its own picture, but prefers a strange picture, if the latter can only express that moment of the object which it wishes to describe. This is the symbolising activity of the phantasy.... It is, moreover, of great significance that the dream phantasy copies objects not in detail, but only in outline and even this in the broadest manner. Its paintings, therefore, appear ingeniously light and graceful. The dream phantasy, however, does not stop at the mere representation of the object, but is impelled from within to mingle with the object more or less of the dream ego, and in this way to produce an action. The visual dream, _e.g._, depicts gold coins in the street; the dreamer picks them up, rejoices, and carries them away.