THE INTERPRETATION OF
DREAMS

ま

THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE ON TIE
PROBLEMS OF THE DREAM *

In the following pages I shall prove that there exists a psycho-
logical technique by which dreams may be interpreted, and
that upon the application of this method every dream will
show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which
may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic
activity of the waking state. I shall furthermore endeavour
to explain the processes which give rise to the strangeness
and obscurity of the dream, and to discover through them
the nature of the psychic forces which operate, whether in
combination or in opposition, to produce the dream. This
accomplished, my investigation will terminate, as it will have
reached the point where the problem of the dream meets with
broader problems, the solution of which must be attempted
through other material.

I must presuppose that the reader is acquainted with the
work done by earlier authors as well as with the present
status of the dream problem in science, since in the course of
this treatise I shall not often have occasion to return to them.
For, notwithstanding the effort of several thousand years,
little progress has been made in the scientific understanding
of dreams. This has been so universally acknowledged by
the authors that it seems unnecessary to quote individual
opinions. One will find in the writings indexed at the end
of this book many stimulating observations and plenty of
interesting material for our subject, but little or nothing

* To the first publication of this book, 1900.
A

2 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

that concerns the true nature of the dream or that solves
definitively any of its enigmas. Still less of course has been
transmitted to the knowledge of the educated laity.

The first book in which the dream is treated as an object
of psychology seems to be that of Aristotle 1 (Concerning
Dreams and their Interpretation). Aristotle asserts that the
dream is of demoniacal, though not of divine nature, which
indeed contains deep meaning, if it be correctly interpreted.
He was also acquainted with some of the characteristics of
dream life, e.g., he knew that the dream turns slight sensa-
tions perceived during sleep into great ones (“one imagines
that one walks through fire and feels hot, if this or that part
of the body becomes slightly warmed ”), which led him to
conclude that dreams might casily betray to the physician
the first indications of an incipient change in the body passing
unnoticed during the day. I have been unable to go more
deeply into the Aristotelian treatise, because of insufficient
preparation and lack of skilled assistance.

As every one knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not
consider the dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a
divine inspiration, and in ancient times the two antagonistic
streams, which one finds throughout in the estimates of
dream life, were already noticeable. They distinguished
between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to
warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and
empty dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead
him to destruction.* This pre-scientific conception of the
dream among the ancients was certainly in perfect keeping
with their general view of life, which was wont to project as
reality in the outer world that which possessed reality only
within the mind. It, moreover, accounted for the main im-

* Compare, on the other hand, O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und
Religionsgeschichte, p. 390. “Dreams were divided into two classes : the first
were influenced 2 by the present (or past), and were unimportant for the
future: they embraced the evörvıa, insomnia, which immediately produces
the given idea or its opposite, e.g. hunger or its satiation, and the gavrdouara,
which elaborates the given idea phantastically, as e.g. the nightmare, ephialtes.
The second class was, on the other hand, determinant for the future. To
this belong : (1) direct prophecies received in the dream (xpnuaruubs, oracu-
lum) (2) the foretelling of a future event (pana); (3) the symbolic or the
dream requiring interpretation (čvepos, somnium). This theory has been
preserved for many centuries.”

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 3

pression made upon the waking life by the memory left from
the dream in the morning, for in this memory the dream, as
compared with the rest of the psychic content, seems some-
thing strange, coming, as it were, from another world. It
would likewise be wrong to suppose that the theory of the
supernatural origin of dreams lacks followers in our own day ;
for leaving out of consideration all bigoted and mystical
authors—who are perfectly justified in adhering to the
remnants of the once extensive realm of the supernatural
until they have been swept away by scientific explanation
—one meets even sagacious men averse to anything adven-
turous, who go so far as to base their religious belief in the
existence and co-operation of superhuman forces on the
inexplicableness of the dream manifestations (Haffner 32).
The validity ascribed to the dream life by some schools of
philosophy, e.g. the school of Schelling, is a distinct echo of
the undisputed divinity of dreams in antiquity, nor is dis-
cussion closed on the subject of the mantic or prophetic power
of dreams. This is due to the fact that the attempted psycho-
logical explanations are too inadequate to overcome the
accumulated material, however strongly all those who devote
themselves to a scientific mode of thought may feel that such
assertions should be repudiated.

To write a history of our scientific knowledge of dream
problems is so difficult because, however valuable some parts
of this knowledge may have been, no progress in definite
directions has been discernible. There has been no con-
struction of a foundation of assured results upon which future
investigators could continue to build, but every new author
takes up the same problems afresh and from the very beginning.
Were I to follow the authors in chronological order, and give
a review of the opinions each has held concerning the problems
of the dream, I should be prevented from drawing a clear and
complete picture of the present state of knowledge on the
subject. I have therefore preferred to base the treatment
upon themes rather than upon the authors, and I shall cite
for each problem of the dream the material found in the
literature for its solution.

But as I have not succeeded in mastering the entire
literature, which is widely disseminated and interwoven with

4 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

that on other subjects, I must ask my readers to rest content
provided no fundamental fact or important viewpoint be lost
in my description.

Until recently most authors have been led to treat the
subjects of sleep and dream in the same connection, and with
them they have also regularly treated analogous states of
psychopathology, and other dreamlike states like hallucina-
tions, visions, &c. In the more recent works, on the other
hand, there has been a tendency to keep more closely to the
theme, and to take as the subject one single question of the
dream life. This change, I believe, is an expression of the
conviction that enlightenment and agreement in such obscure
matters can only be brought about by a series of detailed
investigations. It is such a detailed investigation and one of
a special psychological nature, that I would offer here. I have
little occasion to study the problem of sleep, as it is essentially
a psychological problem, although the change of functional
determinations for the mental apparatus must be included in
the character of sleep. The literature of sleep will therefore
not be considered here.

A scientific interest in the phenomena of dreams as such
leads to the following in part interdependent inquiries :

(a) The Relation of the Dream to the Waking State.—The naive
judgment of a person on awakening assumes that the dream—
if indeed it does not originate in another world—at any rate
has taken the dreamer into another world. The old physio-
logist, Burdach, to whom we are indebted for a careful and
discriminating description of the phenomena of dreams, ex-
pressed this conviction in an often-quoted passage, p. 474:
“The waking life never repeats itself with its trials and joys,
its pleasures and pains, but, on the contrary, the dream aims to
relieve us of these. Even when our whole mind is filled with
one subject, when profound sorrow has torn our hearts or
when a task has claimed the whole power of our mentality, the
dream either gives us something entirely strange, or it takes for
its combinations only a few elements from reality, or it only
enters into the strain of our mood and symbolises reality.”

L. Striimpell % expresses himself to the same effect in his
Nature and Origin of Dreams (p. 16), a study which is every-
where justly held in high respect: "He who dreams turns

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM a

his back upon the world of waking consciousness" (p. 17). “In
the dream the memory of the orderly content of the waking
consciousness and its normal behaviour is as good as entirely
lost” (p. 19). “The almost complete isolation of the mind
in the dream from the regular normal content and course of
the waking state . . .”

But the overwhelming majority of the authors have
assumed a contrary view of the relation of the dream to
waking life. Thus Haffner ? (p. 19): * First of all the dream
is the continuation of the waking state. Our dreams always
unite themselves with those ideas which have shortly before
been in our consciousness. Careful examination will nearly
always find a thread by which the dream has connected itself
with the experience of the previous day.” Weygandt 75
(p. 6), flatly contradicts the above cited statement of Burdach :
“For it may often be observed, apparently in the great
majority of dreams, that they lead us directly back into
everyday life, instead of releasing us from it.” Maury 5
(p. 56), says in a concise formula : “ Nous révons de ce que
nous avons vu, dit, desiré ou fait.” Jessen, 90 in his Psychology,
published in 1855 (р. 530), is somewhat more explicit : “ The
content of dreams is more or less determined by the individual
personality, by age, sex, station in life, education, habits, and
by events and experiences of the whole past life.”

The ancients had the same idea about the dependence of
the dream content upon life. I cite Radestock 24 (p. 139):
“When Xerxes, before his march against Greece, was dis-
suaded from this 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 very appropriately that dream pictures mostly contain
that of which one has been thinking while awake.”

In the didactic poem of Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
(IV, у. 959), occurs this passage :—

“ Et quo quisque fere studio devinetus 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," &c., &c.

6 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Cicero (De Divinatione, II) says quite similarly, as does
also Maury much later :—

“ Maximeque reliquiae earum rerum moventur in animis
et agitantur, de quibus vigilantes aut cogitavimus aut egimus."

The contradiction expressed in these two views as to the
relation between dream life and waking life seems indeed
insoluble. It will therefore not be out of place to mention
the description of F. W. Hildebrandt 35 (1875), who believes
that the peculiarities of the dream can generally be described
only by calling them a " series of contrasts which apparently
shade off into contradictions” (p. 8). “ The first of these
contrasts is formed on the one hand by the strict isolation or
seclusion of the dream from true and actuallife, and on the
other hand by the continuous encroachment of the one upon
the other, and the constant dependency of one upon the
other. The dream is something absolutely separated from
the reality experienced during the waking state ; one may call
it an existence hermetically sealed up and separated from
real life by an unsurmountable chasm. It frees us from
reality, extinguishes normal recollection of reality, and places
us in another world and in a totally different life, which at
bottom has nothing in common with reality. . . ." Hildebrandt
then asserts that in falling asleep our whole being, with all its
forms of existence, disappears “as through an invisible trap
door." In the dream one is perhaps making a voyage to
St. Helena in order to offer the imprisoned Napoleon something
exquisite in the way of Moselle wine. One is most amicably
received by the ex-emperor, and feels almost sorry when the
interesting illusion is destroyed on awakening. But let us
now compare the situation of the dream with 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 he would take as destination for such a voyage.
The dreamer entertains no sympathetic feeling for Napoleon,
but on the contrary a strong patriotic hatred. And finally the
dreamer was not yet among the living when Napoleon died on
the island ; so that it was beyond the reach of possibility for
him to have had any personal relations with Napoleon. The
dream experience thus appears as something strange, inserted
between two perfectly harmonising and succeeding periods.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 7

“ Nevertheless,” continues Hildebrandt, “ the opposite 8
seemingly just as true and correct. I believe that hand in
hand with this seclusion and isolation there can still exist
the most intimate relation and connection. We may justly
say that no matter what the dream offers, it finds its material
in reality and in the psychic life arrayed around this reality.
However strange the dream may seem, it can never detach
itself from reality, and its most sublime as well as its most
farcical structures must always borrow their elementary
material either from what we have seen with our eyes in the
outer world, or from what has previously found a place some-
where in our waking thoughts; in other words, it must be
taken from what we had already experienced either objectively
or subjectively.”

(b) The Material of the Dream.— Memory in the Dream.—
That all the material composing the content of the dream in
some way originates in experience, that it is reproduced in
the dream, or recalled,—this at least may be taken as an
indisputable truth. Yet it would be wrong to assume that
such connection between dream content and reality will be
readily disclosed as an obvious product of the instituted com-
parison. On the contrary, the connection must be carefully
sought, and in many cases it succeeds in eluding discovery for
a long time. The reason for this is to be found in a number of
peculiarities evinced by the memory in dreams, which, though
universally known, have hitherto entirely eluded explanation.
It will be worth while to investigate exhaustively these
characteristics.

It often happens that matter appears in the dream content
which one cannot recognise later in the waking state as be-
longing to one’s knowledge and experience. One remembers
well enough having dreamed about the subject in question,
but cannot recall the fact or time of the experience. The
dreamer is therefore in the dark as to the source from which
the dream has been drawing, and is even tempted to believe
an independently productive activity on the part of the
dream, until, often long afterwards, a new episode brings back
to recollection a former experience given up as lost, and thus
reveals the source of the dream. One is thus forced to admit
that something has been known and remembered in the dream

8 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

that has been withdrawn from memory during the waking
state.

Delbœuf 16 narrates 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 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 a crevice in the wall which was reserved for
them. He also gave them some small fern leaves that had
been growing on the wall, which he knew they were fond

of. In the dream he knew the
ruta muralis.
digression to the lizards, and
saw two other little animals fal
ferns. On turning his eyes to
and a sixth lizard running into

name of the plant: Asplenium

The dream then continued, returning after a

to his astonishment Delbœuf
lling upon what was left of the
the open field he saw a fifth
the hole in the wall, and finally

the street was covered with a procession of lizards, all wander-
ing in the same direction, &c.

In his waking state Delbœuf knew only a few Latin names
of plants, and nothing of the Asplenium. To his great surprise
he became convinced that a fern of this name really existed
and that the correct name was Asplentum ruta muraria, which
the dream had slightly disfigured. An accidental coincidence
could hardly be considered, but it remained a mystery for
Delbœuf whence he got his knowledge of the name Asplenium
in the dream.

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 resembling the albums
that are sold as souvenirs to visitors in many parts of Switzer-
land. A sudden recollection occurred to him; he opened
the herbarium, and discovered therein the Asplenium of his
dream, and recognised his own handwriting in the accom-
panying Latin name. The connection could now be traced.
‘While on her wedding trip, a sister of this friend visited Delbœuf
in 1860—two years prior to the lizard dream. She had with
her at the time this album, which was intended for her brother,
and Delbœuf took the trouble to write, at the dictation of a
botanist, under each of the dried plants the Latin name.

The favourable accident which made possible the report of

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 9

this valuable example also permitted Delbæuf to trace another
portion of this dream to its forgotten source. One day in
1877 he came upon an old volume of an illustrated journal,
in which he found pictured the whole procession of lizards
just as he had dreamed it in 1862. The volume bore the date
of 1861, and Delbœuf could recall that he had subscribed to
the journal from its first appearance.

That the dream has at its disposal recollections which are
inaccessible to the waking state is such a remarkable and
theoretically important fact that I should like to urge more
attention to it by reporting several other `“ Hypermnesic
Dreams." Maury 25 relates that for some time the word
Mussidan used to occur to his mind during the day. He knew
it to be the name of a French city, but nothing else. 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 where the city was, she replied : “ Mussidan is a
principal country town in the Département de La Dordogne.”
On waking, Maury put no faith in the information received in
his dream ; the geographical lexicon, however, showed it to be
perfectly correct. In this case the superior knowledge of the
dream is confirmed, but the forgotten source of this knowledge
has not been traced.

Jessen % tells (p. 55) of a quite similar dream occurrence,
from more remote times. “Among others we may here
mention the dream of the elder Scaliger (Hennings, 7.c., р. 300),
who wrote a poem in praise of celebrated men of Verona, and
to whom a man, named Brugnolus, appeared in a dream,
complaining that he had been neglected. Though Scaliger
did not recall ever having heard of him, he wrote some verses
in his honour, and his son later discovered at Verona thata
Brugnolus had formerly been famous there as a critic.

Myers is said to have published a whole collection of such
hypermnesic dreams in the Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research, which are unfortunately inaccessible to
me. I believe every one who occupies himself with dreams
will recognise as a very common phenomenon the fact that the
dream gives proof of knowing and recollecting matters unknown
to the waking person. In my psychoanalytic investigations
of nervous patients, of which I shall speak later, I am every

10 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

week more than once in position to convince my patients from
their dreams that they are well acquainted with quotations,
obscene expressions, &c., and that they make use of these in
their dreams, although they have forgotten them in the waking
state. I shall cite here a simple case of dream hypermnesia
because it was easy to trace the source which made the know-
ledge accessible to the dream.

A patient dreamed in a lengthy connection that he ordered
a “ Kontussówka “ in a café, and after reporting this inquired
what it might mean, as he never heard the name before. I
was able to answer that Kontussówka was a Polish liquor
which he could not have invented in his dream, as the name
had long been familiar to me in advertisements. The patient
would not at first believe me, but some days later, after he had
realised his dream of the café, he noticed the name on a sign-
board at the street corner, which he had been obliged to pass
for months at least twice a day.

I have learned from my own dreams how largely the dis-
covery of the origin of some of the dream elements depends
on accident. Thus, for years before writing this book, I was
haunted by the picture of a very simply formed church tower
which I could not recall having seen. I then suddenly re-
cognised it with absolute certainty at a small station between
Salzburg and Reichenhall. This was in the later nineties,
and I had travelled over the road for the first time in the year
1886. In later years, when I was already busily engaged in
the study of dreams, I was quite annoyed at the frequent re-
currence of the dream picture of a certain peculiar locality.
I saw it in definite local relation to my person—to my left, a
dark space from which many grotesque sandstone figures
stood out. A glimmer of recollection, which I did not quite
credit, told me 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 came by chance to Padua, which, to my
regret, I had been unable to visit since 1895. My first visit
to this beautiful university city was unsatisfactory; I was
unable to see Giotto's frescoes in the church of the Madonna
dell’ Arena, and on my way there turned back on being in-
formed that the little church was closed on the day. On my
second visit, twelve years later, I thought of compensating

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 11

myself for this, and before everything else I started out for
Madonna dell’ Arena. On the street leading to it, on my left,
probably at the place where I had turned in 1895, I discovered
the locality which I had so often seen in the dream, with its
sandstone figures. It was in fact the entrance to a restaurant
garden.

One of the sources from which the dream draws material
for reproduction—material which in part is not recalled or
employed in waking thought—is to be found in childhood. I
shall merely cite some of the authors who have observed and
emphasized this.

Hildebrandt % (p. 23): “It has already been expressly
admitted that the dream sometimes brings back to the mind
with wonderful reproductive ability remote and even forgotten
experiences from the earliest periods.”

Strümpell °° (p. 40): “ The subject becomes more inter-
esting when we remember how the dream sometimes brings
forth, as it were, from among the deepest and heaviest strata
which later years have piled upon the earliest childhood ex-
periences, the pictures of certain places, things, and persons,
quite uninjured and with their original freshness. This is not
limited merely to such impressions as have gained vivid con-
sciousness during their origin or have become impressed with
strong psychic validity, and then later return in the dream as
actual reminiscences, causing pleasure to the awakened con-
sciousness. On the contrary, the depths of the dream memory
comprise also such pictures of persons, things, places, and
carly experiences as either possessed but little consciousness
and no psychic value at all, or have long ago lost both, and there-
fore appear totally strange and unknown both in the dream and
in the waking state, until their former origin is revealed.”

Volkelt?? (p. 119): “It is essentially noteworthy how
easily infantile and youthful reminiscences enter into the
dream. What we have long ceased to think about, what has
long since lost for us all importance, is constantly recalled by
the dream.”

The sway of the dream over the infantile material, which,
as is well known, mostly occupies the gaps in the conscious
memory, causes the origin of interesting hypermnestic dreams,
a few of which I shall here report.

12 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Maury % relates (p. 92) that as a child he often went from
his native city, Meaux, to the neighbouring Trilport, where
his father superintended the construction of a bridge. On a
certain night a dream transported him to Trilport, and he was
again playing in the city streets. A man approached him
wearing some 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 reality of the reminiscence, asked his old
servant, who had been with him in his childhood, whether she
remembered a man of this name. Certainly,” was the
answer, “he used to be watchman on the bridge which your
father was building at that time.”

Maury reports another example demonstrating just as
nicely the reliability of infantile reminiscences appearing in
dreams. Mr. F- , who had lived as a child in Montbrison,
decided to visit his home and old friends of his family after
an absence of twenty-five years. The night before his de-
parture he dreamt that he had reached his destination, and
that he met near Montbrison a man, whom he did not know by
sight, who told him he was Mr. F., a friend of his father. The
dreamer remembered that as a child he had known a gentle-
man of this name, but on waking he could no longer recall his
features. Several days later, having really arrived at Mont-
brison, he found the supposedly unknown locality of his dream,
and there met a man whom he at once recognised as the Mr. F.
of his dream. The real person was only older than the one in
the dream picture.

I may here relate one of my own dreams in which the
remembered impression is replaced by an association. In my
dream I saw a person whom I recognised, while dreaming, as
the physician of my native town. The features were indistinct
and confused with the picture of one of my colleague teachers,
whom I still see occasionally. What association there was
between the two persons I could not discover on awakening.
But upon questioning my mother about the physician of my
early childhood, I discovered that he was a one-eyed man.
My teacher, whose figure concealed that of the physician in
the dream, was also one-eyed. I have not seen the physician
for thirty-eight years, and I have not to my knowledge thought

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 13

of him in my waking state, although a scar on my chin might
have reminded me of his help.

As if to counterbalance the immense role ascribed to the
infantile impressions in the dream, many authors assert that
the majority of dreams show elements from the most recent
time. Thus Robert” (p. 46) declares that the normal dream
generally occupies itself only with the impressions of the
recent days. We learn indeed that the theory of the dream
advanced by Robert imperatively demands that the old im-
pressions should be pushed back, and the recent ones brought
to the front. Nevertheless the fact claimed by Robert really
exists; I can confirm this from my own investigations.
Nelson, an American author, thinks that the impressions most
frequently found in the dream date from two or three days
before, as if the impressions of the day immediately preceding
the dream were not sufficiently weakened and remote.

Many authors who are convinced of the intimate connec-
tion between the dream content and the waking state are im-
pressed by the fact that impressions which have intensely
occupied the waking mind appear in the dream only after they
have been to some extent pushed aside from the elaboration
of the waking thought. Thus, as a rule, we do not dream of a
dead beloved person while we are still overwhelmed with
sorrow. Still Miss Hallam, one of the latest observers, has
collected examples showing the very opposite behaviour, and
claims for the point the right of individual psychology.

The third and the most remarkable and incomprehensible
peculiarity of the memory in dreams, is shown in the selection
of the reproduced material, for stress is laid not only on the
most significant, but also on the most indifferent and super-
ficial reminiscences. On this point I shall quote those authors
who have expressed their surprise in the most emphatic manner.

Hildebrandt 35 (p. 11): “ For it is a remarkable fact that
dreams do not, as a rule, take their elements from great and
deep-rooted events or from the powerful and urgent interests
of the preceding day, but from unimportant matters, from the
most worthless fragments of recent experience or of a more
remote past. The most shocking death in our family, the
impressions of which keep us awake long into the night, be-
comes obliterated from our memories, until the first moment

14 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

of awakening brings it back to us with depressing force. On
the other hand, the wart on the forehead of a passing stranger,
of whom we did not think for a second after he was out of sight,
plays its part in our dreams.”

Striimpell % (p. 39): “. . . such cases where the analysis
of a dream brings to light elements which, although derived
from events of the previous day or the day before the last,
yet prove to be so unimportant and worthless for the waking
state that they merge into forgetfulness shortly after coming
to light. Such occurrences may be statements of others
heard accidentally or actions superficially observed, or fleeting
perceptions of things or persons, or single phrases from
books, de.”

Havelock Ellis ** (р. 727): “The profound emotions of
waking life, the questions and problems on which we spread
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.”

Binz ④ (p. 45) takes occasion from the above-mentioned
characteristics of the memory in dreams to express his dis-
satisfaction with explanations of dreams which he himself
has approved of: “ And the normal dream raises similar
questions. Why do we not always dream of memory im-
pressions from the preceding days, instead of going back to
the almost forgotten past lying far behind us without any
perceptible reason ? Why in a dream does consciousness so
often revive the impression of indifferent memory pictures
while the cerebral cells bearing the most sensitive records of
experience remain for the most part inert and numb, unless an
acute revival during the waking state has shortly before excited
them ? “

We can readily understand how the strange preference
of the dream memory for the indifferent and hence the
unnoticed details of daily experience must usually lead us
to overlook altogether the dependence of the dream on
the waking state, or at least make it difficult to prove this

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 15

dependence in any individual case. It thus happened that in
the statistical treatment of her own and her friend’s dreams,
Miss Whiton Calkins ? found 11 per cent. of the entire number
that showed no relation to the waking state. Hildebrandt
was certainly correct in his assertion that all our dream
pictures 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 it
would at most lead us to ferret out all kinds of quite worthless
psychic material from the most remote corners of the memory
chamber, and to bring to light some very indifferent moments
from the remote past which were perhaps buried the next
hour after their appearance.” I must, however, express my
regret that this discerning author refrained from following
the road whose beginning looked so unpromising ; it would
have led him directly to the centre of the dream problem.

The behaviour of the memory in dreams is surely most
significant for every theory of memory in general. It teaches
us that “nothing which we have once psychically possessed
is ever entirely lost “ (Scholz 59) ; or as Delbœuf puts it, “ que
toute impression méme la plus insignifiante, laisse une trace
inaltérable, indéfiniment susceptible de reparaitre au jour,” a
conclusion to which we are urged by so many of the other
pathological manifestations of the psychic life. Let us now
bear in mind this extraordinary capability of the memory in
the dream, in order to perceive vividly the contradictions which
must be advanced in certain dream theories to be mentioned
later, when they endeavour to explain the absurdities and
incoherence of dreams through a partial forgetting of what
we have known during the day.

One might even think of reducing the phenomenon of
dreaming to that of memory, and of regarding the dream as the
manifestation of an activity of reproduction which does not
rest even at night, and which is an end in itself. Views like
those expressed by Pilez 52 would corroborate this, according
to which intimate relations are demonstrable between the time
of dreaming and the contents of the dream from the fact
that the impressions reproduced by the dream in sound sleep
belong to the remotest past while those reproduced towards
morning are of recent origin. But such a conception is rendered

16 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

improbable from the outset by the manner of the dream’s
behaviour towards the material to be remembered. Striimpell %
justly calls our attention to the fact that repetitions of ex-
periences do not occur in the dream. To be sure the dream
makes an effort in that direction, but the next link is wanting,
or appears in changed form, or it is replaced by something
entirely novel. The dream shows only fragments of repro-
duction ; this is so often the rule that it admits of theoretical
application. Still there are exceptions in which the dream
repeats an episode as thoroughly as our memory would in its
waking state. Delbæutf tells of one of his university colleagues
who in his dream repeated, with all its details, a dangerous
wagon ride in which he escaped accident as if by miracle.
Miss Calkins ? mentions two dreams, the contents of which
exactly reproduced incidents from the day before, and I
shall later take occasion to report an example which came to
my notice, showing a childish experience which returned un-
changed in a dream.*

(c) Dream Stimuli and Dream Sources—What is meant
by dream stimuli and dream sources may be explained by
referring to the popular saying, “Dreams come from the
stomach.” This notion conceals a theory which conceives
the dream as a result of a disturbance of sleep. We should
not have dreamed if some disturbing element had not arisen
in sleep, and the dream is the reaction from this disturbance.

The discussion of the exciting causes of dreams takes up
the most space in the descriptions of the authors. That this
problem could appear only after the dream had become an
object of biological investigation is self-evident. The ancients
who conceived the dream as a divine inspiration had no need
of looking for its exciting source ; to them the dream resulted
from the will of the divine or demoniacal powers, and its
content was the product of their knowledge or intention.
Science, however, soon raised the question whether the stimulus
to the dream is always the same, or whether it might be
manifold, and thus led to the question whether the causal

* From subsequent experience I am able to state that it is not at all rare
to find in dreams repetitions of harmless or unimportant occupations of the
waking state, such as packing trunks, preparing food, work in the kitchen, &c.,

but in such dreams the dreamer himself emphasizes not the character but the
reality of the memory, “I have really done all this in the day time.”

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 17

explanation of the dream belongs to psychology or rather to
physiology. Most authors seem to assume that the causes of the
disturbance of sleep,and hence the sources of thedream, might be
of various natures, and that physical as well as mental irritations
might assume the 1616 of dream inciters. Opinions differ greatly
in preferring this or that one of the dream sources, in ranking
them, and indeed as to their importance for the origin of dreams.

Wherever the enumeration of dream sources is complete
we ultimately find four forms, which are also utilised for the
division of dreams :—

I. External (objective) sensory stimuli.
II. Internal (subjective) sensory stimuli.
III. Internal (organic) physical excitations.
IV. Purely psychical exciting sources.

I. The External Sensory Stimuli—The younger Strümpell,
son of the philosopher whose writings on the subject have
already more than once served us as a guide in the problem
of dreams, has, as is well known, reported his observations on
a patient who was afflicted with general anesthesia of the
skin and with paralysis of several of the higher sensory organs.
This man merged into sleep when his few remaining sensory
paths from the outer world were shut off. When we wish to
sleep we are wont to strive for a situation resembling the
one in Strümpell's experiment. We close the most important
sensory paths, the eyes, and we endeavour to keep away from
the other senses every stimulus and every change of the
stimuli acting upon them. We then fall asleep, although we
are never perfectly successful in our preparations. We can
neither keep the stimuli away from the sensory organs
altogether, nor can we fully extinguish the irritability of the
sensory organs. That we may at any time be awakened by
stronger stimuli should prove to us “that the mind has re-
mained in constant communication with the material world
even during sleep.” The sensory stimuli which reach us during
sleep may easily become the source of dreams.

There are a great many stimuli of such nature, ranging
from those that are unavoidable, being brought on by the
sleeping state or at least occasionally induced by it, to the
accidental waking stimuli which are adapted or calculated
to put an end to sleep. Thus a strong light may force itself

B

18 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

into the eyes, a noise may become perceptible, or some odori-
ferous matter may irritate the mucous membrane of the nose.
In the spontaneous movements of sleep we may lay bare parts
of the body and thus expose them to a sensation of cold, or
through change of position we may produce sensations of
pressure and touch. A fly may bite us, or a slight accident at
night may simultaneously attack more than one sense. Ob-
servers have called attention to a whole series of dreams in
which the stimulus verified on waking, and a part of the
dream content corresponded to such a degree that the stimulus
could be recognised as the source of the dream.

I shall here cite a number of such dreams collected by
Jessen % (p. 527), traceable to more or less accidental objective
sensory stimuli. “ Every indistinctly perceived noise gives
rise to corresponding dream pictures; 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 at night we may
dream that we are walking about naked or falling into the
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 steep
height. Should our head accidentally get under the pillow
we may then imagine a big rock hanging over us and about to
crush us under its weight. Accumulation of semen produces
voluptuous dreams, and local pain the idea of suffering ill
treatment, of hostile attacks, or of accidental bodily injuries.”

“ Meier (Versuch einer Erklärung des Nachtwandelns, Halle,
1758, p. 33), once dreamed of being assaulted by several
persons who threw him flat on the ground and drove a stake
into the ground between his big and second toes. While
imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and felt a blade
of straw sticking between his toes. The same author, accord-
ing to Hemmings (Von den Traumen und Nachtwandeln,
Weimar, 1784, p. 258) dreamed on another occasion that he
was being hanged when his shirt was pinned somewhat tight
around his neck. Hauffbauer dreamed in his youth of having
fallen from a high wall and found upon waking that the bed-
stead had come apart, and that he had actually fallen to the

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 19

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 Ætna, where he found the heat on the ground almost
unbearable. After having applied a blistering plaster to his
head, a second man dreamed of being scalped by Indians; a
third, whose shirt was damp, dreamed of being dragged through
a stream. An attack of gout caused the patient to believe
that he was in the hands of the Inquisition, and suffering pains
of torture (Macnish).”

The argument based upon the resemblance between
stimulus and dream content is reinforced if through a sys-
tematic induction of stimuli we succeed in producing dreams
corresponding to the stimuli. According to Macnish such
experiments have already been made by Giron de Buzareingues.
“ He left his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling in a
mail coach at night. He remarked in this connection that
travellers would well know how cold the knees become in a
coach at night. Another time he left the back of his head
uncovered, and dreamed of 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 such occasions.”

Maury ‘ reports new observations on dreams produced in
himself. (A number of other attempts produced no results.)

1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip
of his nose. He dreamed of awful torture, viz. that a mask
of pitch was stuck to his face and then forcibly torn off,
taking the skin with it.

2. Scissors were sharpened on pincers. He heard bells
ringing, then sounds of alarm which took him back to the
June days of 1848.

3. Cologne water was put on his nose. He found himself
in Cairo in the shop of John Maria Farina. This was followed
by mad adventures which he was unable to reproduce.

4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a
blistering plaster was put on him, and thought of a doctor
who treated him in his childhood.

5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed
that chauffeurs * broke into the house and forced the occupants

+ Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendée who resorted to this
form of torture.

20 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

to give up their money by sticking their feet into burning
coals. The Duchess of Abrantés, whose secretary he imagined
himself in the dream, then entered.

6. A drop of water was let fall on his forehead. He
imagined himself in Italy perspiring heavily and drinking
white wine of Orvieto.

7. When a burning candle was repeatedly focussed on him
through red paper, he dreamed of the weather, of heat, and of a
storm at sea which he once experienced in the English Channel.

D'Hervey,% Weygandt,” and others have made other
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 present a gradually pre-
pared and initiated catastrophe (Hildebrandt)3s. “In
former years,” this author relates, “I occasionally made use
of an alarm clock in order to wake regularly at a certain
hour in the morning. It probably happened hundreds of
times that the sound of this instrument fitted into an ap-
parently very long and connected dream, as if the entire
dream had been especially designed for it, as if it found in
this sound its appropriate and logically indispensable point,
its inevitable issue.”

I shall cite three of these alarm-clock dreams for another
purpose.

Volkelt (р. 68) relates: “ A composer once dreamed that
he was teaching school, and was just explaining something to
his pupils. He had almost finished when he turned to one
of the boys with the question: ‘Did you understand me?”
The boy cried out like one possessed * Ya.” Annoyed at this,
he reprimanded him for shouting. But now the entire class
was screaming “Orya, then “Euryo, and finally ` Feueryo.'
He was now aroused by an actual alarm of fire in the street.”

Garnier (Traité des Facultés de V Ame, 1865), reported by
Radestock,4 relates that Napoleon L, while sleeping in a
carriage, was awakened from a dream by an explosion which
brought back to him the crossing of the Tagliamento and the
bombarding of the Austrians, so that he started up crying,
“ We are undermined ! ”

The following dream of Maury % has become celebrated.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 21

He was sick, and remained in bed; his mother sat beside
him. He then dreamed of the reign of terror at the time of
the Revolution. He took part in 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 that cruel epoch ; he had to give an account
of himself, and, after all sort of incidents which did not fix
themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accom-
panied by an enormous crowd, he was led to the place of
execution. He mounted the scaffold, the executioner tied him
to the board, it tipped, and the knife of the guillotine fell. He
felt his head severed from the trunk, and awakened in terrible
anxiety, only to find that the top piece of the bed had fallen
down, and had actually struck his cervical vertebra in the
same manner as the knife of a guillotine.

This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion introduced
by Le Lorrain and Egger? in the Revue Philosophique.
The question was 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 awakening.

Examples of this nature make it appear that the objective
stimuli during sleep are the most firmly established of all
the dream sources ; indeed, it is the only stimulus which plays
any part in the layman’s knowledge. If we ask an educated
person, who is, however, unacquainted with the literature of
dreams, how dreams originate, he is sure to answer by referring
to a case familiar to him in which a dream has been explained
after waking by a recognised objective stimulus. Scientific
investigation cannot, however, stop here, but is incited to
further research by the observation that the stimulus in-
fluencing the senses during sleep does not appear in the dream
at all in its true form, but is replaced by some other presenta-
tion which is in some way related to it. But the relation
existing between the stimulus and the result of the dream is,
according to Maury,“ “ une affinité quelconque mais qui n'est
pas unique et exclusive ” (p. 72). If we read, e.g., three of
Hildebrandt’s “ Alarm Clock Dreams,” we will then have to
inquire why the same stimulus evoked so many different
results, and why just these results and no others.

22 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

(P. 37). “I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning.
I saunter through the green fields to a neighbouring village,
where I see the natives going to church in great numbers,
wearing their holiday attire and carrying their hymn-books
under their arms. I remember that it is Sunday, and that
the morning service will soon begin. .1 decide to attend it,
but as I am somewhat overheated I also decide to cool off
in the cemetery surrounding the church. While reading the
various epitaphs, I hear the sexton ascend the tower and see the
small village bell in the cupola which is about to give signal for
the beginning of the devotions. For another short 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 sound of bells comes from the
alarm clock.”

“A second combination. It is a clear day, the streets are
covered with deep snow. I have promised to take part in a
sleigh-ride, but have had to wait for some time before it was
announced that the sleigh is in front of my house. The
preparations for getting into the sleigh are now made. I put
on my furs and adjust my muff, and at last I am in my place.
But the departure is still delayed, until the reins give the
impatient horses the perceptible sign. They start, and the
sleigh bells, now forcibly shaken, begin their familiar janizary
music with a force that instantly tears the gossamer of my
dream. Again it is only the shrill sound of my alarm clock.”

Still a third example. “I see the kitchen-maid walk along
the corridor to the dining-room with several dozen plates
piled up. The porcelain column in her arms seems to me to
be in danger of losing its equilibrium. "Take care, I ex-
claim, ‘you will drop the whole pile The usual retort is
naturally not wanting—that she is used to such things. Mean-
while I continue to follow her with my worried glance, and
behold ! at the door-step the fragile dishes fall, tumble, and
roll across the floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon notice
that the noise continuing endlessly 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 23

Strümpell, and almost identically by Wundt,'* to the effect
that the reaction of the mind to the attacking stimuli in sleep
is determined by the formation of illusions. A sensory im-
pression is recognised by us and correctly interpreted, i.e. it
is classed with the memory group to which it belongs according
to all previous experience, if the impression is strong, clear,
and long enough, and if we have the necessary time at our
disposal for this reflection. If these conditions are not fulfilled,
we mistake the objects which give rise to the impression, and
on its basis we form an illusion. “If one takes a walk in an
open field and perceives indistinctly a distant object, it may
happen that he will at first take it for a horse.” On closer
inspection the image of a cow resting may obtrude itself, and
the presentation may finally resolve itself with certainty into
a group of people sitting. The impressions which the mind
receives during sleep through outer stimuli are of a similar
indistinet nature; they give rise to illusions because the
impression evokes a greater or lesser number of memory
pictures through which the impression receives its psychic
value. In which of the many spheres of memory to be taken
into consideration the corresponding pictures are aroused,
and which of the possible association connections thereby
come into force, this, even according to Striimpell, remains
indeterminable, and is left, as it were, to the caprice of the
psychic life.

We may here take our choice. We may admit that the
laws of the dream formation cannot really be traced any
further, and therefore refrain from asking whether or not the
interpretation of the illusion evoked by the sensory impression
depends upon still other conditions ; or we may suppose that
the objective sensory stimulus encroaching upon sleep plays
only a modest part as a dream source, and that other factors
determine the choice of the memory picture to be evoked.
Indeed, on carefully examining Maury's experimentally produced
dreams, which I have purposely reported in detail, one is apt
to think that the experiment really explains the origin of only
one of the dream elements, and that the rest of the dream
content appears in fact too independent, too much determined
in detail, to be explained by the one demand, viz. that it must
agree with the element experimentally introduced. Indeed

24 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

one even begins to doubt the illusion theory, and the power of
the objective impression to form the dream, when one learns
that this impression at times experiences the most peculiar
and far-fetched interpretations during the sleeping state.
Thus B. M. Simon ® tells of a dream in which he saw persons
of gigantic stature * seated at a table, and heard distinctly the
awful rattling produced by the impact of their jaws while
chewing. On waking he heard the clacking of the hoofs of a
horse galloping past his window. If the noise of the horse’s
hoofs had recalled ideas from the memory sphere of “ Gulliver's
Travels,” the sojourn with the giants of Brobdingnag and the
virtuous horse-creatures—as I should perhaps interpret it
without any assistance on the author's part—should not the
choice of a memory sphere so uncommon for the stimulus have
some further illumination from other motives ?

IL Internal (Subjective) Sensory Stimuli.—Notwithstanding
all objections to the contrary, we must admit that the role of
the objective sensory stimuli as a producer of dreams has been
indisputably established, and if these stimuli seem perhaps
insufficient in their nature and frequency to explain all dream
pictures, we are then directed to look for other dream sources
acting in an analogous manner. I do not know where the
idea originated that along with the outer sensory stimuli the
inner (subjective) stimuli should also be considered, but as a
matter of fact this is done more or less fully in all the more
recent descriptions of the etiology of dreams. “ An important
part is played in dream illusions,” says Wundt (p. 363),
“by those subjective sensations of seeing and hearing which
arc familiar to us in the waking state as a luminous chaos in
the dark field of vision, ringing, buzzing, &c., of the ears, and
especially irritation of the retina. This explains the remark-
able tendency of the dream to delude the eyes with numbers of
similar or identical objects. Thus we see spread before our eyes
numberless birds, butterflies, fishes, coloured beads, flowers, &c.
Here the luminous dust in the dark field of vision has taken on
phantastic figures, and the many luminous points of which it
consists are embodied by the dream in as many single pictures,
which are looked upon as moving objects owing to the mobility

* Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that it deals with
a scene from the dreamer’s childhood.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 25

of the luminous chaos. This is also the root of the great
fondness of the dream for the most complex animal figures,
the multiplicity of forms readily following the form of the
subjective light pictures.”

The subjective sensory stimuli as a source of the dream
have the obvious advantage that unlike the objective stimuli
they are independent of external accidents. They are, so to
speak, at the disposal of the explanation as often as it needs
them. They are, however, in so far inferior to the objective
sensory stimuli that the röle of dream inciter, which observa-
tion and experiment have proven for the latter, can be verified
in their case only with difficulty or not at all. The main proof
for the dream-inciting power of subjective sensory excitements
is offered by the so-called hypnogogic hallucinations, which
have been described by John Müller as “ phantastic visual
manifestations.” They are those very vivid and changeable
pictures which occur regularly in many people during the
period of falling asleep, and which may remain for awhile even
after the eyes have been opened. Maury, who was consider-
ably troubled by them, subjected them to a thorough study,
and maintained that they are related to or rather identical
with dream pictures—this has already been asserted by John
Müller. Maury states that a certain psychic passivity is
necessary for their origin ; it requires a relaxation of the tension
of attention (p. 59). But in any ordinary disposition a hypno-
gogic hallucination may be produced by merging for a second
into such lethargy, after which one perhaps awakens until this
oft-repeated process terminates in sleep. According to Maury,
if one awakens shortly thereafter, it is often possible to demon-
strate the same pictures in the dream which one has perceived
as hypnogogic hallucinations before falling asleep (p. 134).
Thus it once happened to Maury with a group of pictures of
grotesque figures, with distorted features and strange head-
dresses, which obtruded themselves upon him with incredible
importunity during the period of falling asleep, and which
he recalled having dreamed upon awakening. On another
occasion, while suffering from hunger, because he kept himself
on a rather strict diet, he saw hypnogogically 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

26 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

food, and heard the rattle made by the diners with their forks.
On still another occasion, after falling asleep with irritated
and painful eyes, he had the hypnogogic hallucination of
seeing microscopically small characters which he was forced
to decipher one by one with great exertion; having been
awakened from his 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.

Just as in the case of these pictures, auditory hallucinations
of words, names, &c., may also appear hypnogogically, and
then repeat themselves in the dream, like an overture announc-
ing the principal motive of the opera which is to follow.

A more recent observer of hypnogogic hallucinations,
G. Trumbull Ladd,” takes the same path pursued by John
Müller 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 having gradually
fallen asleep, which gave him opportunity to compare the
sensations of the retina just vanishing with the dream pictures
remaining in his memory. He assures us that an intimate
relation between the two can always be recognised, in the
sense that the luminous dots and lines of the spontaneous light
of the retina produced, so to speak, the sketched outline or
scheme for the psychically perceived dream figures. A dream,
e.g., in which he saw in front of him clearly printed lines which
he read and studied, corresponded to an arrangement of the
luminous dots and lines in the retina in parallel lines, or, to
express it in his own words: “ The clearly printed page,
which he was reading in the dream, resolved itself into an
object which appeared to his waking perception like part of an
actual printed sheet looked at through a little hole in a piece
of paper, from too great a distance to be made out distinctly.”
Without in any way under-estimating the central part of the
phenomenon, Ladd believes that hardly any visual dream
occurs in our minds that is not based on material furnished
by this mner condition of stimulation in the retina. This is
particularly true of dreams occurring shortly after falling asleep
in a dark room, while dreams occurring in the morning near the
period of awakening receive their stimulation from the ob-
jective light penetrating the eye from the lightened room.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 27

The shifting and endlessly variable character of the spon-
taneous luminous excitation of the retina corresponds exactly
to the fitful succession of pictures 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 excitation for the dream; for visual pictures ap-
parently form the principal constituent of our dreams. The
share furnished from the spheres of the other senses, beside
the sense of hearing, is more insignificant and inconstant.

III. Internal (Organic) Physical Excitation— If we are dis-
posed to seek dream sources not outside, but inside, the
organism, we must remember that almost all our internal
organs, which in their healthy state hardly remind us of their
existence, may, in states of excitation—as we call them—or
in disease, become for us a source of the most painful sensa-
tions, which must be put on an equality with the external
excitants of the pain and sensory stimuli. It is on the strength
of very old experience that, e.g., Strümpell % declares that
“ during sleep the mind becomes far more deeply and broadly
conscious of its connection with the body than in the waking
state, and it is compelled to receive and be influenced by
stimulating impressions originating in parts and changes of the
body of which it is unconscious in the waking state.” Even
Aristotle ! declares it quite possible that the dream should
draw our attention to incipient morbid conditions which we
have not noticed at all in the waking state (owing to the
exaggeration given by the dream to the impressions; and
some medical authors, who were certainly far from believing
in any prophetic power of the dream, have admitted this
significance of the dream at least for the foretelling of disease.
(Compare M. Simon, p. 31, and many older authors.)

Even in our times there seems to be no lack of authenticated
examples of such diagnostic performances on the part of the
dream. Thus Tissió % cites from Artigues (Essai sur la Valeur
séméiologique des Réves), the history of a woman of forty-three
years, who, during several years of apparently perfect health,
was troubled with anxiety dreams, and in whom medical
examination later disclosed an incipient affection of the heart
to which she soon succumbed.

Serious disturbances of the internal organs apparently act

28 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

as inciters of dreams in a considerable number of persons.
Attention is quite generally called to the frequency of anxiety
dreams in the diseases of the heart and lungs; indeed this
relation of the dream life is placed so conspicuously in the
foreground by many authors that I shall here content myself
with a mere reference to the literature. (Radestock,% Spitta,°*
Maury, M. Simon, Tissić.) Tissié even assumes that the
diseased organs impress upon the dream content their char-
acteristic features. The dreams of persons suffering from
diseases of the heart are generally very brief and terminate
in a terrified awakening ; the situation of death under terrible
circumstances almost always plays a part in their content.
Those suffering from diseases of the lungs dream of suffocation,
of being crowded, and of flight, and a great many of them are
subject to the well-known nightmare, which, by the way,
Boerner has succeeded in producing experimentally by lying
on the face and closing up the openings of the respiratory
organs. In digestive disturbances the dream contains ideas
from the sphere of enjoyment and disgust. Finally, the
influence of sexual excitement on the dream content is per-
ceptible enough in every one’s experience, and lends the strongest
support to the entire theory of the dream excitation through
organic sensation.

Moreover, as we go through the literature of the dream,
it becomes quite obvious that some of the authors (Maury,
Weygandt 75) have been led to the study of dream problems
by the influence of their own pathological state on the content
of their dreams.

The addition to dream sources from these undoubtedly
established facts is, however, not as important as one might
be led to suppose; for the dream is a phenomenon which
occurs in healthy persons—perhaps in all persons, and every
night—and a pathological state of the organs is apparently
not one of its indispensable conditions. For us, however,
the question is not whence particular dreams originate, but
what may be the exciting source for the ordinary dreams of
normal persons.

But we need go only a step further to find a dream source
which is more prolific than any of those mentioned above,
which indeed promises to be inexhaustible in every case. If

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 29

it is established that the bodily organs become in sickness
an exciting source of dreams, and if we admit that the mind,
diverted during sleep from the outer world, can devote more
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 some way or other grow into
dream pictures, to reach the sleeping mind. What in the
waking state we broadly perceive as general sensation, distin-
guishable by its quality alone, to which, in the opinion of the
physicians, all the organic systems contribute their shares—
this general sensation at night attaining powerful efficiency
and becoming active with its individual components—would
naturally furnish the most powerful as well as the most common
source for the production of the dream presentations. It still
remains, however, to examine according to what rule the
organic sensations become transformed into dream presenta-
tions.

The theory of the origin of dreams just stated has been the
favourite with all medical authors. The obscurity which
conceals the essence of our being—the “ moi splanchnique,” as
Tissié terms it—from our knowledge and the obscurity of the
origin of the dream correspond too well not to be brought into
relation with each other. The train of thought which makes
organic sensation the inciter of the dream has besides another
attraction for the physician, inasmuch as it favours the etio-
logical union of the dream and mental diseases, which show so
many agreements in their manifestations, for alterations in
the organic sensations and excitations emanating from the
inner organs are both of wide significance in the origin of the
psychoses. It is therefore not surprising that the theory of
bodily sensation can be traced to more than one originator
who has propounded it independently.

A number of authors have been influenced by the train
of ideas developed by the philosopher Schopenhauer in 1851.
Our conception of the universe originates through the fact
that our intellect recasts the impressions coming to it from
without in the moulds of time, space, and causality. The
sensations from the interior of the organism, proceeding from
the sympathetic nervous system, exert in the day-time an
influence on our mood for the most part unconscious. At

30 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

night, however, when the overwhelming influence of the
day’s impressions is no longer felt, the impressions pressing
upward from the interior are able to gain attention—just as
in the night we hear the rippling of the spring that was rendered
inaudible by the noise of the day. In what other way, then,
could the intellect react upon these stimuli than by performing
its characteristic function ? It will transform the stimuli
into figures, filling space and time, which move at the beginning
of causality; and thus the dream originates. Scherner,%
and after him Volkelt,” attempted to penetrate into closer
relations between physical sensations and dream pictures ;
but we shall reserve the discussion of these attempts for the
chapter on the theory of the dream.

In a study particularly logical in its development, the
psychiatrist Krauss ® found the origin of the dream as well
as of deliria and delusions in the same element, viz. the
organically determined sensation. According to this author
there is hardly a place in the organism which might not become
the starting point of a dream or of a delusion. Now organically
determined sensations * may be divided into two classes :
(1) those of the total feeling (general sensations), (2) specific
sensations which are inherent in the principal systems of the
vegetative organism, which may be divided 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 picture on the basis of the physical
sensations is conceived by Krauss as follows : The awakened
sensation evokes a presentation related to it in accordance
with some law of association, and combines with this, thus
forming an organic structure, towards which, however, con-
sciousness does not maintain its normal attitude. For it does
not bestow any attention on the sensation itself, but concerns
itself entirely with the accompanying presentation; this is
likewise the reason why the state of affairs in question should
have been so long misunderstood (p. 11, &c.) Krauss finds
for this process the specific term of “ transubstantiation of the
feeling into dream pictures ” (p. 24).

That the organic bodily sensations exert some influence on
the formation of the dream is nowadays almost universally
acknowledged, but the question as to the law underlying the

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 31

relation between the two is answered in various ways and
often in obscure terms. On the basis of the theory of bodily
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 recognise the rules of interpretation advanced
by Scherner,5 we frequently find ourselves confronted with
the awkward fact that the organie exciting source reveals
itself in the content of the dream only.

A certain agreement, however, is manifested in the inter-
pretation of the various forms of dreams which have been
designated as * typical" because they recur in so many persons
with almost the same contents. Among these are the well-
known dreams of falling from heights, of the falling out of
teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because of being naked
or barely clad. This last dream is said to be caused simply
by the perception felt in sleep that one has thrown off the bed-
cover and is exposed. The dream of the falling out of teeth is
explained by “ dental irritation,” which does not, however, of
necessity imply a morbid state of excitation in the teeth.
According to Striimpell, the flying dream is the adequate
picture used by the mind to interpret the sum of excitation
emanating from the rising and sinking of the pulmonary lobes
after the cutaneous sensation of the thorax has been reduced
to insensibility. It is this latter circumstance that causes a
sensation related to the conception of flying. Falling from
a height in a dream is said to have its cause in the fact that
when unconsciousness of the sensation of cutaneous pressure
has set in, either an arm falls away from the body or a flexed
knee is suddenly stretched out, causing the feeling of cutaneous
pressure to return to consciousness, and the transition to
consciousness embodies itself psychically as a dream of falling.
(Strümpell, p. 118). The weakness of these plausible attempts
at explanation evidently 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. I shall, however, later
have occasion to recur to typical dreams and to their origin.

From comparison of a series of similar dreams, M. Simon 3
endeavoured to formulate certain rules for the influence of the

32 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

organic sensations on the determination of the resulting dream.
He says (p. 34): “If any organic apparatus, which during
sleep normally participates in the expression of an affect, for
any reason merges into the state of excitation to which it is
usually aroused by that affect, the dream thus produced will
contain presentations which fit the affect.”

Another rule reads as follows (p. 85): “If an organic
apparatus is in a state of activity, excitation, or disturbance
during sleep, the dream will bring ideas which are related to
the exercise of the organic function which is performed by
that apparatus.”

Mourly Vold 73 has undertaken to prove experimentally
the influence assumed by the theory of bodily sensation for a
single territory. He has made experiments in altering the
positions of the sleeper’s limbs, and has compared the resulting
dream with his alterations. As a result he reports the following
theories :—

1. The position of a limb in a dream corresponds approxi-
mately to that of reality, i.e. we dream of a static condition of
the limb which corresponds to the real 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 to the real position.

3. The position of one’s own limb may be attributed in the
dream to another person.

4. One may dream further 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 position of a limb may incite in the dream ideas
which bear some relation or other to this limb. Thus, e.g.,
if we are employed with the fingers we dream of numerals.

Such results would lead me to conclude that even the
theory of bodily sensation cannot fully extinguish the apparent
freedom in the determination of the dream picture to be
awakened. *

* The first volume of, this Norwegian author, containing a complete de-
seription of dreams, has recently appeared in German. See Index of
Literature, No. 74 a.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 33

IV. Psychic Exciting Sources.—In treating the relations of
the dream to the waking life and the origin of the dream
material, we learned that the earliest as well as the latest
investigators agreed that men dream of what they are doing
in the day-time, and of what they are interested in during the
waking state. This interest continuing from waking life into
sleep, besides being a psychic tie joining the dream to life, also
furnishes us a dream source not to be under-estimated, which,
taken with those stimuli which become interesting and active
during sleep, suffices to explain the origin of all dream pictures.
But we have also heard the opposite of the above assertion,
viz. that the dream takes the sleeper away from the interests
of the day, and that in most cases we do not dream of things
that have occupied our attention during the day until after
they have lost for the waking life the stimulus of actuality.
Hence in the analysis of the dream life we are reminded at
every step that it is inadmissible to frame general rules without
making provision for qualifications expressed by such terms
as “frequently,” “as a rule,” “in most cases,” and without
preparing for the validity of the exceptions.

If the conscious interest, together with the inner and outer
sleep stimuli, sufficed to cover the etiology of the dreams, we
ought to be in a position to give a satisfactory account of the
origin of all the elements of a dream ; the riddle of the dream
sources would thus be solved, leaving only the task of separat-
ing the part played by the psychic and the somatic dream stimuli
in individual dreams. But as a matter of fact no such com-
plete solution of a dream has ever been accomplished in any
case, and, what is more, every one attempting such solution
has found that in most cases there have remained a great
many components of the dream, the source of which he was
unable to explain. The daily interest as a psychic source of
dreams is evidently not far-reaching enough to justify the
confident assertions to the effect that we all continue our
waking affairs in the dream.

Other psychic sources of dreams are unknown. Hence,
with the exception perhaps of the explanation of dreams given
by Scherner,5 which will be referred to later, all explanations
found in the literature show a large gap when we come to the
derivation of the material for the presentation pictures, which

0

34 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

is most characteristic for the dream. In this dilemma the
majority of authors have developed a tendency to depreciate
as much as possible the psychic factor in the excitations of
dreams which is so difficult to approach. To be sure, they
distinguish as a main division of dreams the nerve-exciting
and the association dreams, and assert that the latter has its
source exclusively in reproduction (Wundt,"% p. 365), but they
cannot yet dismiss the doubt whether “they do not appear
without being impelled by the psychical stimulus “ (Volkelt,'?
p. 127). The characteristic quality of the pure association
dream is also found wanting. To quote Volkelt (p. 118): “In
the association dreams proper we can no longer speak of such
a firm nucleus. Here the loose grouping penetrates also into
the centre of the dream. The ideation which is already set
free from reason and intellect is here no longer held together
by the more important psychical and mental stimuli, but is
left to its own aimless shifting and complete confusion.”
Wundt, too, attempts to depreciate the psychic factor in the
stimulation of dreams by declaring that the “ phantasms of
the dream certainly are unjustly regarded as pure hallucina-
tions, and that probably most dream presentations are really
illusions, inasmuch as they emanate from slight sensory im-
pressions which are never extinguished during sleep” (p.
338, &c.). Weygandt "5 agrees with this view, but generalises
it. He asserts that “ the first source of all dream presentations
is a sensory stimulus to which reproductive associations are
then joined “ (p. 17). Tissié % goes still further in repressing
the psychic exciting sources (p. 183): “ Les rêves d’origine
absolument psychique n'existent pas”; and elsewhere (р. 6),
“ Les pensées de nos rêves nous viennent de dehors . . .”

Those authors who, like the influential philosopher Wundt,
adopt a middle course do not fail to remark that in most
dreams there is a co-operation of the somatic stimuli with
the psychic instigators of the dream, the latter being either
unknown or recognised as day interests.

We shall learn later that the riddle of the dream formation
can be solved by the disclosure of an unsuspected psychic
source of excitement. For the present we shall not be surprised
at the over-estimation of those stimuli for the formation of
the dream which do not originate from psychic life. It is

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 35

not merely because they alone can easily be found and even
confirmed by experiment, but the somatic conception of the
origin of dreams thoroughly corresponds to the mode of
thinking in vogue nowadays in psychiatry. Indeed, the
mastery of the brain over the organism is particularly em-
phasized ; but everything that might prove an independence
of the psychic life from the demonstrable organic changes, or a
spontaneity in its manifestations, is alarming to the psychiatrist
nowadays, as if an acknowledgment of the same were bound to
bring back the times of natural philosophy and the meta-
physical conception of the psychic essence. The distrust of
the psychiatrist has placed the psyche under a guardian, so
to speak, and now demands that none of its feelings shall
divulge any of its own faculties ; but this attitude shows slight
confidence in the stability of the causal concatenation which
extends between the material and the psychic. Even where
on investigation the psychic can be recognised as the primary
course of a phenomenon, a more profound penetration will
some day succeed in finding a continuation of the path to the
organic determination of the psychic. But where the psychic
must be taken as the terminus for our present knowledge, it
should not be denied on that account.

(d) Why the Dream is Forgotten after Awakening—That the
dream “fades away “ in the morning is proverbial. To be
sure, it is capable of recollection. For we know the dream
only by recalling it after awakening; but very often wo
believe that we remember it only incompletely, and that
during the night there was more of it; we can observe how
the memory of a dream which has been still vivid in the
morning vanishes in the course of the day, leaving only a few
small fragments ; we often know that we have been dreaming,
but we do not know what; and we are so well used to the
fact that the dream is liable to be forgotten that we do not
reject as absurd the possibility that one may have been
dreaming even when one knows nothing in the morning of
either the contents or the fact of dreaming. On the other hand,
it happens that dreams manifest an extraordinary retentive-
ness in the memory. I have had occasion to analyse with my
patients dreams which had occurred to them twenty-five
years or more previously, and I can remember a dream of my

36 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

own which is separated 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 Striimpell.“ This forgetting is evidently a complex
phenomenon ; for Striimpell does not explain it by a single
reason, but by a considerable number of reasons.

In the first place, all those factors which produce forgetful-
ness in the waking state are also determinant for the forgetting
of dreams. When awake we are wont soon to forget a large
number of sensations and perceptions because they are too
feeble, and because they are connected with a slight amount
of emotional feeling. This is also the case with many dream
pictures ; they are forgotten because they are too weak, while
stronger pictures in proximity will be remembered. Moreover,
the factor of intensity in itself is not the only determinant
for the preservation of the dream pictures; Strümpell, as well
as other authors (Calkins), admits that dream pictures are
often rapidly forgotten, although they are known to have been
vivid, whereas among those that are retained in memory
there are many that are very shadowy and hazy. Besides, in
the waking state one is wont to forget easily what happened
only once, and to note more easily things of repeated occurrence.
But most dream pictures are single experiences,* and this
peculiarity equally contributes towards the forgetting of all
dreams. Of greater significance is a third motive for forgetting.
In order that feelings, presentations, thoughts and the like,
should attain a certain degree of memory, it is important that
they should not remain isolated, but that they should enter
into connections and associations of a suitable kind. If the
words of a short verse are taken and mixed together, it will be
very difficult to remember them. “ When well arranged in
suitable sequence one word will help another, and the whole
remains as sense easily and firmly in the memory for a long
time. Contradictions we usually retain with just as much
difficulty and rarity as things confused and disarranged.“
Now. dreams in most cases lack sense and order. Dream

* Periodically recurrent dreams have been observed repeatedly. Cf.
the collection of Ohabaneix.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 37

compositions are by their very nature incapable of being
remembered, and they are forgotten because they usually
crumble together the very next moment. To be sure, these
conclusions are not in full accord with the observation of
Radestock ** (p. 168), that we retain best just those dreams
which are most peculiar.

According to Strümpell, there are still other factors effective
in the forgetting of dreams which are derived from the relation
of the dream to the waking state. The forgetfulness of the
waking consciousness for dreams is evidently only the counter-
part of the fact already mentioned, that the dream (almost)
never takes over successive memories from the waking state,
but only certain details of these memories which it tears away
from the habitual psychic connections in which they are re-
called while we are awake. The dream composition, therefore,
has no place in the company of psychic successions which fill
the mind. It lacks all the aids of memory. `“ 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,
which the next breath of air soon dispels” (p. 87). This is
also aided by the fact that, upon awakening, the attention is
immediately seized by the inrushing sensory world, and only
very few dream pictures can withstand this power. They fade
away before the impressions of the new day like the glow of
the stars before the sunlight.

As a last factor favouring the forgetting of dreams, we may
mention the fact that most people generally take little interest
in their dreams. One who investigates dreams for a time,
and takes a special interest in them, usually dreams more
during that time than at any other; that is, he remembers
his dreams more easily and more frequently.

Two other reasons for the forgetting of dreams added by
Bonatelli (given by Benini ?) to those of Strümpell have already
been included in the latter ; namely, (1) that the change of the
general feeling between the sleeping and waking states is un-
favourable to the mutual reproductions, and (2) that the
different arrangement of the presentation material in the
dream makes the dream untranslatable, so to speak, for the
waking consciousness.

It is the more remarkable, as Striimpell observes, that, in

38 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

spite of all these reasons for forgetting the dream, so many
dreams are retained in memory. The continued efforts of the
authors to formulate laws for the remembering of dreams
amounts to an admission that here too there is something
puzzling and unsolved. Certain peculiarities relating to the
memory of dreams have been particularly noticed of late, e.g.,
that a dream which is considered forgotten in the morning may
be recalled in the course of the day through a perception
which accidentally touches the forgotten content of the dream
(Radestock,% Tissié 88). The entire memory of the dream is
open to an objection calculated to depreciate its value very
markedly in critical eyes. One may doubt whether our
memory, which omits so much from the dream, does not falsify
what it retained.

Such doubts relating to the exactness of the reproduction
of the dream are expressed by Strümpell when he says: “Tt
therefore easily happens that the active consciousness in-
voluntarily inserts much in recollection of the dream; one
imagines one has dreamt all sorts of things which the actual
dream did not contain.”

Jessen ** (p. 547) expresses himself very decidedly : “ More-
over we must not lose sight of the fact, hitherto little heeded,
that in the investigation and interpretation of orderly and
logical dreams we almost always play with the truth when we
recall a dream to memory. Unconsciously and unwittingly
we fillup the gaps and supplement the dream pictures. 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. The tendency of the human mind to conceive
everything in connection is so great that it unwittingly supplies
the deficiencies of connection if the dream is recalled somewhat
disconnectedly.”

The observations of V. Eggers,” though surely inde-
pendently conceived, sound almost like a translation of Jessens
words: **. . . L’observation des rêves a ses difficultés spéciales
et le seul moyen d’éviter toute erreur en pareille matière est de
confier au papier sans le moindre retard ce que l’on vient
d’éprouver et de remarquer ; sinon, l’oubli vient vite ou total
ou partiel ; l’oubli total est sans gravité ; mais l’oubli partiel

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 39

est perfide ; car si l’on se met ensuite à raconter ce que l’on
n’a pas oublié, on est exposé à compléter par imagination les
ragments incohérents et disjoints fourni par la mémoire . . .;
on devient artiste à son insu, et le récit, periodiquement répété
s’impose à la créance de son auteur, qui, de bonne foi, le
présente comme un fait authentique, dûment établi selon les
onnes méthodes . . .”

Similarly Spitta,% who seems to think that it is only in our
attempt to reproduce the dream that we put in order the
oosely associated dream elements: “ To make connection out
of disconnection, that is, to add the process of logical con-
nection which is absent in the dream.”

As we do not at present possess any other objective control
or the reliability of our memory, and as indeed such a control
is impossible in examining the dream which is our own ex-
perience, and for which our memory is the only source, it is a
question what value we may attach to our recollections of
dreams.

(e) The Psychological Peculiarities of Dreams —In the
scientific investigation of the dream we start with the assump-
tion that the dream is an occurrence of our own psychic
activity ; nevertheless the finished dream appears to us as
something strange, the authorship of which we are so little
forced to recognise that we can just as easily say “a dream
appeared to me,” as " I have dreamt.” Whence this “ psychic
strangeness” of the dream ? According to our discussion of
the sources of dreams we may suppose that it does not depend
on the material reaching the dream content; because this is
for the most part common to the dream life and waking life.
One may ask whether in the dream it is not changes in the
psychic processes which call forth this impression, and may
so put to test a psychological characteristic of the dream.

No one has more strongly emphasized the essential difference
between dream and waking life, and utilised this difference for
more far-reaching conclusions, than С. Th. Fechner * in some
observations in his Elements of Psychophysic (p. 520, part 11).
He believes that "neither the simple depression of conscious
psychic life under the main threshold,” nor the distraction of
attention from the influences of the outer world, suffices to
explain the peculiarities of the dream life as compared with

40 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

the waking life. He rather believes that the scene of dreams
is laid elsewhere than in the waking presentation life. “ If
the scene of the psychophysical activity were the same during
the sleeping and the waking states, the dream, in my opinion,
could only be a continuation of the waking ideation maintain-
ing itself at a lower degree of intensity, and must moreover
share with the latter its material and form. But the state of
affairs is quite different.”

What Fechner really meant has never been made clear,
nor has anybody else, to my knowledge, followed further the
road, the clue to which he indicated in this remark. An
anatomical interpretation in the sense of physiological brain
localisations, or even in reference to histological sections of
the cerebral cortex, will surely have to be excluded. The
thought may, however, prove ingenious and fruitful if it can be
referred to a psychic apparatus which is constructed out of
many instances placed one behind another.

Other authors have been content to render prominent one
or another of the tangible psychological peculiarities of the
dream life, and perhaps to take these as a starting point for
more far-reaching attempts at explanation.

It has been justly remarked that one of the main pecu-
liarities of the dream life appears even in the state of falling
asleep, and is to be designated as the phenomenon inducing
sleep. According to Schleiermacher 41 (p. 351), the char-
acteristic part of the waking state is the fact that the psychic
activity occurs in ideas rather than in pictures. But the
dream thinks in pictures, and one may observe that with the
approach of sleep the voluntary activities become difficult
in the same measure as the involuntary appear, the latter
belonging wholly to the class of pictures. The inability for
such presentation work as we perceive to be intentionally
desired, and the appearance of pictures which is regularly
connected with this distraction, these are two qualities which
are constant in the dream, and which in its psychological
analysis we must recognise as essential characters of the dream
life. Concerning the pictures—the hypnogogic hallucinations
—we have discovered that even in their content they are
identical with the dream pictures.

The dream therefore thinks preponderately, but not

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 41

exclusively, in visual pictures. It also makes use of auditory
pictures, and to a lesser extent of the impressions of the other
senses. Much is also simply thought or imagined (probably
represented by remnants of word presentations), just as in
the waking state. But still what is characteristic for the
dream is only those elements of the content which act like
pictures, de. which resemble more the perceptions than
the memory presentations. Disregarding all the discussions
concerning the nature of hallucinations, familiar to every
psychiatrist, we can say, with all well-versed authors, that the
dream hallucinates, that is, replaces thoughts through hallucina-
tions. In this respect there is no difference between visual
and acoustic presentations; it has been noticed that the
memory of a succession of sounds with which one falls asleep
becomes transformed while sinking into sleep into an hallucina-
tion of the same melody, so as to make room again on awaken-
ing, which may repeatedly alternate with falling into a slumber,
for the softer memory presentations which are differently
formed in quality.

The transformation of an idea into an hallucination is not
the only deviation of the dream from a waking thought which
perhaps corresponds to it. From these pictures the dream
forms a situation, it presents something in the present, it
dramatises an idea, as Spitta 94 (p. 145) puts it." But the
characteristic of this side of the dream life becomes complete
only when it is remembered that while dreaming we do not
—as a rule; the exceptions require a special explanation—
imagine that we are thinking, but that we are living through
an experience, i.e, we accept the hallucination with full
belief. The criticism that this has not been experienced but
only thought in a peculiar manner—dreamt—comes to us only
on awakening. This character distinguishes the genuine
sleeping dream from day dreaming, which is never confused
with reality.

The characteristics of the dream life thus far considered
have been summed up by Burdach (p. 476) in the following
sentences : “ As characteristic features of the dream we may

* Silberer has shown by nice examples how in the state of sleepiness even
abstract thoughts may be changed into illustrative plastic pictures which
express the same thing (Jahrbuch von Bleuler-Freud, vol, 1. 1900).

42 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

add (a) that the subjective activity of our mind appears as
objective, inasmuch as our faculty of perception perceives the
products of phantasy as if they were sensory activities . . .
(b) sleep abrogates one’s self-command, hence falling asleep
necessitates a certain amount of passivity. . . . The slumber
pictures are conditioned by the relaxation of one’s self-
command.”

It is a question now of attempting to explain the credulity
of the mind in reference to the dream hallucinations, which
can only appear after the suspension of a certain arbitrary
activity. Strümpell 96 asserts that the mind behaves in this
respect correctly, and in conformity with its mechanism.
The dream elements are by no means mere presentations, but
true and real experiences of the mind, similar to those that
appear in the waking state as a result of the senses (p. 34).
Whereas in the waking state the mind represents and thinks
in word pictures and language, in the dream it represents and
thinks in real tangible pictures (p. 35). Besides, the dream
manifests a consciousness of space by transferring the sensa-
tions and pictures, just as in the waking state, into an outer
space (p. 36). It must therefore be admitted that the mind
in the dream is in the same relation to its pictures and per-
ceptions as in the waking state (p. 43). If, however, it is
thereby led astray, this is due to the fact that it lacks in sleep
the criticism which alone can distinguish between the sensory
perceptions emanating from within or from without. It
cannot subject its pictures to the tests which alone can prove
their objective reality. It furthermore neglects to differentiate
between pictures that are arbitrarily interchanged and others
where there is no free choice. It errs because it cannot apply
to its content the law of causality (p. 58). In brief, its aliena-
tion from the outer world contains also the reason for its
belief in the subjective dream world.

Delbœuf 10 reaches the same conclusion through a some-
what different line of argument. We give to the dream
pictures the credence of reality because in sleep we have no
other impressions to compare them with, because we are
cut off from the outer world. But it is not perhaps because
we are unable to make tests in our sleep, that we believe in the
truth of our hallucinations. The dream may delude us with

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 43

all these tests, it may make us believe that we may touch the
rose that we see in the dream, and still we only dream. Ac-
cording to Delbæuf there is no valid criterion to show whether
something is a dream or a conscious reality, except—and that
only in practical generality—the fact of awakening. * I declare
delusional everything that is experienced between the period
of falling asleep and awakening, if I notice on awakening that
I lie in my bed undressed" (p. 84). * 1 have considered the
dream pictures real during sleep in consequence of the mental
habit, which cannot be put to sleep, of perceiving an outer
world with which I can contrast my ego.” *

As the deviation from the outer world is taken as the stamp
for the most striking characteristics of the dream, it will be
worth while mentioning some ingenious observations of old
Burdach ® which will throw light on the relation of the sleeping
mind to the outer world and at the same time serve to prevent
us from over-estimating the above deductions. “ Sleep results
only under the condition,” says Burdach, “ that the mind is

> Haffner made an attempt similar to Delbænf's to explain the dream
activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction
of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact
psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different
words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the
absence of time and space, i.e. the emancipation of the presentation from the
position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual.
Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mis-
taking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for
objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially
formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the
free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the
sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum.
These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream
presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and
will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference
to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state. A
man cannot act contrary to the laws of thought, even in the dream, Le. he
is unable to harmonise with that which represents itself as contrary to
him, &c, ; he can only desire in the dream that which he presents to himself
as good (sub ratione boni) But in this application of the laws of thinking
and willing the human mind is led astray in the dream through mistaking
one presentation for another, It thus happens that we form and commit in
the dream the greatest contradictions, while, on the other hand, we display
the keenest judgments and the most consequential chains of reasoning, and
can make the most virtuous and sacred resolutions. Lack of orientation is
the whole secret of the flight by which our phantasy moves in the dream,
and lack of critical reflection and mutual Bedi I with others is the
main source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and
wishes in the dream” (p. 18).

44 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

not excited by sensory stimuli . . . but it is not the lack of
sensory stimuli that conditions sleep, but rather a lack of
interest for the same; some sensory impressions are even
necessary in so far as they serve to calm the mind ; thus the
miller can fall asleep only when he hears the rattling of his
mill, and he who finds it necessary to burn a light at night, as
a matter of precaution, cannot fall asleep in the dark ” (p. 457).

“The psyche isolates itself during sleep from the outer
world, and withdraws from the periphery. . . . Nevertheless,
the connection is not entirely interrupted ; if one did not hear
and feel even during sleep, but only after awakening, he
would certainly never awake. The continuance of sensation
is even more plainly shown by the fact that we are not always
awakened by the mere sensory force of the impression, but by
the psychic relation of the same ; an indifferent word does not
arouse the sleeper, but if called by name he awakens . . .:
hence the psyche differentiates sensations during sleep. . . .
It is for this reason that we may be awakened by the lack of a
sensory stimulus if it relates to the presentation of an important
thing ; thus one awakens when the light is extinguished, and
the miller when the mill comes to a standstill; that is, the
awakening is due to the cessation of a sensory activity, which
presupposes that it has been perceived, and that it has not
disturbed the mind, being indifferent or rather gratifying ”
(p. 460, &c.).

If we are willing to disregard these objections, which are
not to be taken lightly, we still must admit that the qualities
of the dream life thus far considered, which originate by
withdrawing from the outer world, cannot fully explain the
strangeness of the dream. For otherwise it would be possible
to change back the hallucinations of the dream into presenta-
tions and the situations of the dream into thoughts, and thus
to perform the task of dream interpretation. Now this is
what we do when we reproduce the dream from memory after
awakening, and whether we are fully or only partially success-
ful in this back translation the dream still retains its mysterious-
ness undiminished.

Furthermore all the authors assume unhesitatingly that
still other more far-reaching alterations take place in the
presentation material of waking life. One of them, Striimpell,“

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 45

expresses himself as follows (p. 17): “ With the cessation of
the objectively active outlook and of the normal consciousness,
the psyche loses the foundation in which were rooted the
feelings, desires, interests, and actions. Those psychic states,
feelings, interests, estimates which cling in the waking state
to the memory pictures also succumb to ‥ . an obscure
pressure, in consequence of which their connection with the
pictures becomes severed ; the perception pictures of things,
persons, localities, events, and actions of the waking state
are singly very abundantly reproduced, but none of these
brings along its psychic value. The latter is removed from
them, and hence they float about in the mind dependent upon
their own resources. . . ."

This deprivation the picture suffers of its psychic value,
which again goes back to the derivation from the outer world,
is according to Striimpell mainly responsible for the impression
of strangeness with which the dream is confronted in our
memory.

We have heard that even falling asleep carries with it the
abandonment of one of the psychic activities—namely, the
voluntary conduct of the presentation course. Thus the
supposition, suggested also by other grounds, obtrudes itself,
that the sleeping state may extend its influence also over the
psychic functions. One or the other of these functions is
perhaps entirely suspended; whether the remaining ones
continue to work undisturbed, whether they can furnish normal
work under the circumstances, is the next question. The
idea occurs to us that the peculiarities of the dream may be
explained through the inferior psychic activity during the
sleeping state, but now comes the impression made by the
dream upon our waking judgment which is contrary to such a
conception. The dream is disconnected, it unites without
hesitation the worst contradictions, it allows impossibilities,
it disregards our authoritative knowledge from the day, and
evinces ethical and moral dulness. He who would behave in
the waking state as the dream does in its situations would be
considered insane. He who in the waking state would speak
in such manner or report such things as occur in the dream
content, would impress us as confused and weak-minded.
Thus we believe that we are only finding words for the fact

46 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

when we place but little value on the psychic activity in the
dream, and especially when we declare that the higher in-
tellectual activities are suspended or at least much impaired in
the dream.

With unusual unanimity—the exceptions will be dealt with
elsewhere—the authors have pronounced their judgments on the
dream—such judgments as lead immediately to a definite
theory or explanation of the dream life. It is time that I
should supplement the résumé which I have just given with a
collection of the utterances of different authors—philosophers
and physicians—on the psychological character of the dream.

According to Lemoine, the incoherence of the dream
picture is the only essential character of the dream.

Maury % agrees with him ; he says (р. 163): “Il n'y a pas
des réves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque
incohérence, quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité.”

According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta,% the dream lacks all
objective and comprehensible connection.

Dugas says: “Le rêve, c'est l'anarchie psychique,
affective et mentale, c’est le jeu des fonctions livrées à elles-
mêmes et s’exerçant sans contrôle et sans but; dans le rêve
l’esprit est un automate spirituel.”

“The relaxation, solution, and confusion of the presenta-
tion life which is held together through the logical force of the
central ego ” is conceded even by Volkelt 7? (p. 14), according to
whose theory the psychic activity during sleep seems in no
way aimless.

The absurdity of the presentation connections appearing in
the dream can hardly be more strongly condemned than it was
by Cicero (De Divin. II.): “Nihil tam praepostere, tam in-
condite, tam monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus
somniare.””

Fechner 52 says (р. 522): “It is as if the psychological
activity were transferred from the brain of a reasonable being
into the brain of a fool.”

Radestock * (p. 145) says: “It seems indeed impossible
to recognise in this absurd action any firm law. Having with-
drawn itself from the strict police of the rational will guiding the
waking presentation life, and of the attention, the dream
whirls everything about kaleidoscopically in mad play.”

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 47

Hildebrandt % (p. 45) says: “ What wonderful jumps the
dreamer allows himself, e.g., in his chain of reasoning! With
what unconcern he sees the most familiar laws of experience
turned upside down! What ridiculous contradictions he can
tolerate in the orders of nature and society before things go
too far, as we say, and the overstraining of the nonsense
brings an awakening ! We often multiply quite unconcernedly :
three times three make twenty; we are not at all surprised
when a dog recites poetry for us, when a dead person walks
to his grave, and when a rock swims on the water; we go in
all earnestness by high command to the duchy of Bernburg or
the principality of Lichtenstein in order to observe the navy
of the country, or we allow ourselves to be recruited as a
volunteer by Charles XII. shortly before the battle of Poltawa.”

Binz + (p. 33) points to a dream theory resulting from the
impressions. “ Among ten dreams nine at least have an
absurd content. We unite in them persons or things which do
not bear the slightest relation to one another. In the next
moment, as in a kaleidoscope, the grouping changes, if possible
to one more nonsensical and irrational than before; thus the
changing play of the imperfectly sleeping brain continues until
we awaken, and put our hand to our forehead and ask ourselves
whether we really still possess the faculty of rational imagina-
tion and thought.”

Maury * (р. 50) finds for the relation of the dream picture
to the waking thoughts, a comparison most impressive for the
physician : “La production de ces images que chez l'homme
éveillé fait le plus souvent naître la volonté, correspond, pour
l'intelligence, à ce que cont pour la motilité certains mouvements
que nous offrent la chorée et les affections paralytiques. . . ."
For the rest, he considers the dream “ toute une série de dégra-
dation de la faculté pensant et raisonant " (p. 27).

It is hardly necessary to mention the utterances of the
authors which repeat Maury’s assertion for the individual
higher psychic activities.

According to Striimpell,% some logical mental operations
based on relations and connections disappear in the dream—
naturally also at points where the nonsense is not obvious
(p. 26). According to Spitta,% (р. 148) the presentations in
the dream are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality.

48 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Radestock % and others emphasize the weakness of judgment
and decision in the dream. According to Jodl 3? (p. 123), there
is no critique in the dream, and no correcting of a series of
perceptions through the content of the sum of consciousness.
The same author states that “all forms of conscious activity
occur in the dream, but they are imperfect, inhibited, and
isolated from one another.” The contradictions manifested in
the dream towards our conscious knowledge are explained
by Stricker 77 ⑲ (and many others), on the ground that facts
are forgotten in the dream and logical relations between pre-
sentations are lost (p. 98), &c., &c.

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,”* 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 Bpitta.⑥④
it is the emotional life of the psyche that is not overtaken by
sleep and that then directs the dream. “ By emotion
[ Gemiith ”] we understand the constant comprehension of
the feelings as the inmost subjective essence of man ” (p. 84).

Scholz ® (р. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the
dream in the “ allegorising interpretation “ to which the
dream material is subjected. Siebeck ©? 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. DDelboenf ⑱ confesses that he is unable to
conceive this differentiation.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 49

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. Striimpell 62 (p. 70) says: “ The
dream follows either the laws of undisguised presentations as
it seems exclusively or organic stimuli along with such pre-
sentations, that is, without being influenced by reflection and
reason, esthetic 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 pre-
sentations (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 7° 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 7? says : “ In the dream,
the ideas chase and hunt each other on the strength of acci-
dental similarities and barely perceptible connections. All
dreams are pervaded by such loose and free associations.”
Maury 28 attaches great value to this characteristic of connec-
tion 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

D

50 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 de-
preciation of the psychic activities of the dream has not remained
without contradiction from the other side. To be sure, con-
tradiction seems difficult here. Nor is it of much significance
that one of the depreciators of dream life, Spitta % (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 dis-
solution 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 ?* 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, imagina-
tion, 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 51

fous et les sages, les bourreaus 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, 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 (р. 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 meprendre, à la sensation déter-
minée 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
Péveillé.”

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, who, as we know,
sketches the psychological characteristics into three anti-
nomies, sums up in the third of these contradistinctions the
extreme points of this series as follows (р. 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

52 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 de-
preciating 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 essen-
tial 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,* 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 estima-
tion of the dream. It is really the medical authors who are
most prone to underrate the psychic activity in the dream,
+ Of. Haffner ® and Spitta “4,

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 58

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 under-
rate 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 com-
parison, 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,” 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,*
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 4 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. 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

54 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

an object of contention in which hard unsurmountable reflec-
tion 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 90 says (p. 558) : " Nor does one become better or more
virtuous in the dream; on the contrary, it seems that con-
science is silent in the dream, inasmuch as one feels no com-
passion 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 7? (р. 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.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 55

Fischer * 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 93 (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 *? (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, 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, 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
s Hå Grundzüge des Systems der Anthropologie. Erlangen, 1850 (quoted by

itta).
⑧ Fits Traumleben und seine Deutung, 1868 (cited by Spitta, p. 192).

56 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 ap-
parently 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 im-
perative ” 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 deter-
mined 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 re-
cognition 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 responsi-
bility for their dreams. Haffner 32 says (p. 24) : “ We are not

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 57

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): “Tf 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

58 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 ridicu-
lous 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 % we find the follow-
ing relevant expression from A. Zeller (Article “ Trre “ in the
Allgemeinen Encyklopådie der Wissenchaften 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 dream-
like 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 59

we had a different education. Radestock 5! (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,?
who says : “ Certe nostre inclinazione che si credevano suffocate
a spente da un pezzo, si ridestano : passioni vecchie e sepolte
rivivono ; cose e persone a cui non pensiamo mai, ci vengono
dinanzi? (р. 149). Volkelt "2 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,
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 un-
desirable 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 con-
tinued 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

60 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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
råle of monitor who calls our attention to the moral ravages in
the soul, just as in the opinion of physicians it can announce &
hitherto unobserved physical ailment. Spitta,% 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 every-
thing 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 con-
ception, 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 % 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,“ 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 parfoit 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... .
Evidement les visions qui se déroulent devant ma pensée et

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 61

qui constituent le réve, mo sont suggérées par les incitations
que je ressens et que ma volonté absente ne cherche pas a
réfouler ” (p. 113).

If one believes in the capacity of the dream to reveal
an actually existing but repressed or concealed immoral dis-
position 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 done 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 les-
quelles, 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 pénétre 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 psycho-
logical 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 7
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 ? ”

(9) 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

62 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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,
Le. a use or any such activity of the dream, but our expecta-
tion, 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 concep-
tions 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 Delbosuf,# 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 dream-
lessly or to awake when approached by disturbing stimuli—
instead of the third, that of dreaming.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 63

2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the dream
a diminution for the psychic activity, a loosening of the con-
nections, 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 Delbæuf. 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 con-
centration 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 indis-
pensable, or who thinks more scientifically, will find this theory
of the dream expressed in the discussion of Binz ④ (р. 43) : 一

* 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

64 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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.“ 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 (р. 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 65

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; 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
hers are at rest. But such irregularities take place throughout
life . . が (р. 483).

Among extant dream theories which consider the dream a
“ physical “ process, there is one very interesting conception
the dream, first propounded by Robert 55 in 1866, which is
tractive because it assigns to the dream a function or a useful
end. As a basis for this theory, Robert takes from observa-
tion two facts which we have already discussed in our con-
sideration 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
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66 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 elimina-
tions 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 accumu-
late 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 over-
burdened 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 un-
digested thought material lying in the mind becomes con-
nected 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 67

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 а 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
æ 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,’® 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 corro-
borated the universality of this state of affairs. Delage
makes a nice observation of this kind, if it turn 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 investiga-
tion 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

68 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

by Robert,’ 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 ad-
justed ; they, too, are from their nature as new impressions
“autant de ressorts tendus,” which will be relaxed during
sleep. Still more entitled to a råle 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 main-spring
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 réve 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 pro-
pensity 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,? 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,

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 69

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. * 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 con-
tinue the tension of the waking life, but to release it and re-
cuperate 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 ap-
parently 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 under-
taken 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 7? presents
Scherner’s theories : “ From the mystic conglomerations and
from all the gorgeous and magnificent billows there indeed

70 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

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 cogni-
tion, 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. Tt 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 ex-
pressing 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

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 71

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.

According to Scherner, the material upon which the dream
phantasy exerts its artistic activity is preponderately that of
the organic sensory stimuli which are so obscure during the
day (comp. p. 29); hence the phantastic theory of Scherner,
and the perhaps over-sober theories of Wundt and other physio-
logists, though otherwise diametrically opposed, agree perfectly
in their assumption of the dream sources and dream excitants.
But whereas, according to the physiological theory, the psychic
reaction to the inner physical stimuli becomes exhausted with
the awakening of any ideas suitable to these stimuli, these
ideas then by way of association calling to their aid other ideas,
and with this stage the chain of psychic processes seeming to
terminate according to Scherner, the physical stimuli only
supply the psychic force with a material which it may render
subservient to its phantastic intentions. For Scherner the
formation of the dream only commences where in the con-
ception of others it comes to an end.

The treatment of the physical stimuli by the dream phantasy
surely cannot be considered purposeful. The phantasy plays
a tantalising game with them, and represents the organic
source which gives origin to the stimuli in the correspondent
dream, in any plastic symbolism. Indeed Scherner holds the
opinion, not shared by Volkelt and others, that the dream
phantasy has a certain favourite representation for the entire
organism ; this representation would be the house. Fortu-
nately, however, it does not seem to limit itself in its presenta-
tion to this material; it may also conversely employ a whole
series of houses to designate a single organ, e.g., very long rows
of houses for the intestinal excitation. On other occasions
particular parts of the house actually represent particular parts
of the body, as e.g., in the headache-dream, the ceiling of the
room (which the dream sees covered with disgusting reptile-
like spiders) represents the head.

Quite irrespective of the house symbolism, any other
suitable object may be employed for the representation of

72 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

these parts of the body which excite the dream. * Thus the
breathing lungs find their symbol in the flaming stove with its
gaseous roaring, the heart in hollow boxes and baskets, the
bladder in round, bag-shaped, or simply hollowed objects.
The male dream of sexual excitement makes the dreamer find
in the street the upper portion of a clarinette, next to it the
same part of a tobacco pipe, and next to that a piece of fur.
The clarinette and tobacco pipe represent the approximate
shape of the male sexual organ, while the fur represents the
pubic hair. In the female sexual dream the tightness of the
closely approximated thighs may be symbolised by a narrow
courtyard surrounded by houses, and the vagina by a very
narrow, slippery and soft footpath, leading through the court-
yard, upon which the dreamer is obliged to walk, in order
perhaps to carry a letter to a gentleman ” (Volkelt, p. 39). It
is particularly noteworthy that at the end of such a physically
exciting dream, the phantasy, as it were, unmasks by repre-
senting the exciting organ or its function unconcealed. Thus
the “ tooth-exciting dream “ usually ends with the dreamer
taking a tooth out of his mouth.

The dream phantasy may, however, not only direct its atten-
tion to the shape of the exciting organ, but it may also make the
substance contained therein the object of the symbolisation.
Thus the dream of intestinal excitement, e.g., may lead us
through muddy streets, the bladder-exciting dream to foaming
water. Or the stimulus itself, the manner of its excitation, and
the object it covets, are represented symbolically, or the dream
ego enters into a concrete combination with the symbolisation
of its own state, as e.g., when, in the case of painful stimuli, we
struggle desperately with vicious dogs or raging bulls, or when
in the sexual dream the dreamer sees herself pursued by a naked
man. Disregarding all the possible prolixity of elaboration, a
symbolising phantastic activity remains as the central force of
every dream. Volkelt,” in his finely and fervently written book,
next attempted to penetrate further into the character of this
phantasy and to assign to the psychical activity thus recognised,
its position in a system of philosophical ideas, which, however,
remains altogether too difficult of comprehension for any one
who is not prepared by previous schooling for the sympathetic
comprehension of philosophical modes of thinking.

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 78

Scherner connects no useful function with the activity of
the symbolising phantasy in dreams. In the dream the psyche
plays with the stimuli at its disposal. One might presume
that it plays in an improper manner. One might also ask us
whether our thorough study of Scherner’s dream theory, the
arbitrariness and deviation of which from the rules of all
investigation are only too obvious, can lead to any useful results.
It would then be proper for us to forestall the rejection of
Scherner’s theory without examination by saying that this
would be too arrogant. This theory is built up on the im-
pression received from his dreams by a man who paid great
attention to them, and who would appear to be personally very
well fitted to trace obscure psychic occurrences. Furthermore
it treats a subject which, for thousands of years, has appeared
mysterious to humanity though rich in its contents and re-
lations ; and for the elucidation of which stern science, as it
confesses itself, has contributed nothing beyond attempting,
in entire opposition to popular sentiment, to deny the substance
and significance of the object. Finally, let us frankly admit
that apparently we cannot avoid the phantastical in our
attempts to elucidate the dream. There are also phantastic
ganglia cells; the passage cited on p. 63 from a sober and
exact investigator like Binz,* which depicts how the aurora
of awakening flows along the dormant cell masses of the
cerebrum, is not inferior in fancifulness and in improbability
to Scherner’s attempts at interpretation. I hope to be able
to demonstrate that there is something actual underlying the
latter, though it has only been indistinctly observed and does
not possess the character of universality entitling it to the
claim of a dream theory. For the present, Scherner's theory
of the dream, in its contrast to the medical theory, may perhaps
lead us to realise between what extremes the explanation of
dream life is still unsteadily vacillating.

(A) Relations between the Dream and Mental Diseases.— When
we speak of the relation of the dream to mental disturbances,
we may think of three different things: (1) Etiological and
clinical relations, as when a dream represents or initiates a
psychotic condition, or when it leaves such a condition behind
it. (2) Changes to which the dream life is subjected in mental
diseases. (3) Inner relations between the dream and the

74 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

psychoses, analogies indicating an intimate relationship.
These manifold relations between the two series of phenomena
have been a favourite theme of medical authors in the earlier
periods of medical science—and again in recent times—as we
learn from the literature on the subject gathered from Spitta,%
Radestock,5 Maury,“ and Tissić. Sante de Sanctis has
lately directed his attention to this relationship. For the
purposes of our discussion it will suffice merely to glance at
this important subject.

In regard to the clinical and etiological relations between
the dream and the psychoses, I will report the following
observations as paradigms. Hohnbaum asserts (see Krauss,
p. 39), that the first attack of insanity frequently originates
in an anxious and terrifying dream, and that the ruling idea
has connection with this dream. Sante de Sanctis adduces
similar observations in paranoiacs, and declares the dream
to be, in some of them, the “ vraie cause déterminante de la
folie.” The psychosis may come to life all of a sudden with the
dream causing and containing the explanation for the mental
disturbances, or it may slowly develop through further dreams
that have yet to struggle against doubt. In one of de Sanctis's
cases, the affecting dream was accompanied by light hysterical
attacks, which in their turn were followed by an anxious,
melancholic state. Féré (cited by Tissié) refers to a dream
which caused an hysterical paralysis. Here the dream is
offered us as an etiology of mental disturbance, though we
equally consider the prevailing conditions when we declare
that the mental disturbance shows its first manifestation in
dream life, that it has its first outbreak in the dream. In
other instances the dream life contained the morbid symp-
toms, or the psychosis was limited to the dream life. Thus
Thomayer ” calls attention to anxiety dreams which must be
conceived as equivalent to epileptic attacks. Allison has
described nocturnal insanity (cited by Radestock), in which
the subjects are apparently perfectly well in the day-time,
while hallucinations, fits of frenzy, and the like regularly
appear at night. De Sanctis and Tissié report similar ob-
servations (paranoiac dream-equivalent in an alcoholic, voices
accusing a wife of infidelity). Tissié reports abundant ob-
servations from recent times in which actions of a pathological

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 75

character (based on delusions, obsessive impulses) had their
origin in dreams. Guislain describes a case in which sleep
was replaced by an intermittent insanity.

There is hardly any doubt that along with the psychology
of the dream, the physician will one day occupy himself with
the psychopathology of the dream.

In cases of convalescence from insanity, it is often especially
obvious that, while the functions of the day are normal, the
dream life may still belong to the psychosis. Gregory is said
first to have called attention to such cases (cited by Krauss **).
Macario (reported by Tissié) gives account of a maniac who,
a week after his complete recovery again experienced in
dreams the flight of ideas and the passionate impulses of his
disease.

Concerning the changes to which the dream life is sub-
jected in chronic psychotic persons, very few investigations
have so far been made. On the other hand, timely attention
has been called to the inner relationship between the dream
and mental disturbance, which shows itself in an extensive
agreement of the manifestations occurring to both. According
to Maury," Cubanis, in his Rapports du physique et du moral,
first called attention to this; following him came Lelut,
J. Moreau, and more particularly the philosopher Maine de
Biran. To be sure, the comparison is still older. Radestock 54
begins the chapter dealing with this comparison, by giving a
collection of expressions showing the analogy between the
dream and insanity. Kant somewhere says: “ The lunatic
is a dreamer in the waking state.” According to Krauss
* Insanity is a dream with the senses awake.” Schopenhauer
terms the dream a short insanity, and insanity a long dream.
Hagen describes the delirium as dream life which has not
been caused by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in the Physio-
logical Psychology, declares : As a matter of fact we may in
the dream ourselves live through almost all symptoms which
we meet in the insane asylums.”

The specific agreements, on the basis of which such an
identification commends itself to the understanding, are
enumerated by Spitta.% And indeed, very similarly, by Maury
in the following grouping: “ (1) Suspension or at least re-
tardation, of self-consciousness, consequent ignorance of the

76 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

condition as such, and hence incapability of astonishment
and lack of moral consciousness. (2) Modified perception of
the sensory organs; that is, perception is diminished in the
dream and generally enhanced in insanity. (3) Combination
of ideas with each other exclusively in accordance with the
laws of association and of reproduction, hence automatic
formation of groups and for this reason disproportion in the
relations between ideas (exaggerations, phantasms). And as
a result of all this: (4) Changing or transformation of the
personality and at times of the peculiarities of character

(perversities).”
Radestock gives some additional features or analogies in
the material: “ Most hallucinations and illusions are found in

the sphere of the senses of sight and hearing and general
sensation. As in the dream, the smallest number of elements
is supplied by the senses of smell and taste. The fever
patient, like the dreamer, is assaulted by reminiscences from
the remote past; what the waking and healthy man seems
to have forgotten is recollected in sleep and in disease.” The
analogy between the dream and the psychosis receives its full
value only when, like a family resemblance, it is extended to
the finer mimicry and to the individual peculiarities of facial
expression.

“To him who is tortured by physical and mental sufferings
the dream accords what has been denied him by reality, to
wit, physical well-being and happiness; so the insane, too,
see the bright pictures of happiness, greatness, sublimity, and
riches. The supposed possession of estates and the imaginary
fulfilment of wishes, the denial or destruction of which have
just served as a psychic cause of the insanity, often form the
main content of the delirium. The woman who has lost a
dearly beloved child, in her delirium experiences maternal
joys; the man who has suffered reverses of fortune deems
himself immensely wealthy ; and the jilted girl pictures herself
in the bliss of tender love.”

The above passage from Radestock, an abstract of a keen
discussion of Griesinger * (p. 111), reveals with the greatest
clearness the wish fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagina-
tion, common to the dream and the psychosis. (My own
investigations have taught me that here the key to a

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 77

psychological theory of the dream and of the psychosis is to
be found.)

* Absurd combinations of ideas and weakness of judgment
are the main characteristics of the dream and of insanity.”
The over-estimation of one’s own mental capacity, which
appears absurd to sober judgment, is found alike both in one
and the other, and the rapid course of ideas in the dream
corresponds to the flight of ideas in the psychosis. Both are
devoid of any measure of time. The dissociation of personality
in the dream, which, for instance, distributes one’s own know-
ledge between two persons, one of whom, the strange one,
corrects in the dream one’s own ego, fully corresponds to the
well-known splitting of personality in hallucinatory paranoia ;
the dreamer, too, hears his own thoughts expressed by strange
voices. Even the constant delusions find their analogy in the
stereotyped recurring pathological dreams (réve obsedant).
After recovering from a delirium, patients not infrequently
declare that the disease appeared to them like an uncomfort-
able dream ; indeed, they inform us that occasionally, even
during the course of their sickness, they have felt that they
were only dreaming, just as it frequently happens in the
sleeping dream.

Considering all this, it is not surprising that Radestock
condenses his own opinion and that of many others into the
following : Insanity, an abnormal phenomenon of disease, is
to be regarded as an enhancement of the periodically recurring
normal dream states ” (p. 228).

Krauss 3 attempted to base the relationship between the
dream and insanity upon the etiology (or rather upon the
exciting sources), perhaps making the relationship even more
intimate than was possible through the analogy of the pheno-
mena they manifest. According to him, the fundamental
element common to both is, as we have learned, the organically
determined sensation, the sensation of physical stimuli, the
general feeling produced by contributions from all the organs.
Cf. Peise, cited by Maury 48 (p. 60).

The incontestable agreement between the dream and
mental disturbance, extending into characteristic details,
constitutes one of the strongest supports of the medical theory
of dream life, according to which the dream is represented as a

78 THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

useless and disturbing process and as the expression of a reduced
psychic activity. One cannot expect, however, to derive the
final explanation of the dream from the mental disturbances,
as it is generally known in what unsatisfactory state our
understanding of the origin of the latter remains. It is very
probably, however, that a modified conception of the dream
must also influence our views in regard to the inner mechanism
of mental disturbances, and hence we may say that we are
engaged in the elucidation of the psychosis when we endeavour
to clear up the mystery of the dream.

I shall have to justify myself for not extending my summary
of the literature of the dream problems over the period be-
tween the first appearance of this book and its second edition.
If this justification may not seem very satisfactory to the
reader, I was nevertheless influenced by it. The motives
which mainly induced me to summarise the treatment of the
dream in the literature have been exhausted with the foregoing
introduction ; to have continued with this work would have
cost me extraordinary effort and would have afforded little
advantage or knowledge. For the period of nine years referred
to has yielded nothing new or valuable either for the conception
of the dream in actual material or in points of view. In most
of the publications that have since appeared my work has
remained unmentioned and unregarded; naturally least
attention has been bestowed upon it by the so-called “ investi-
gators of dreams,” who have thus afforded a splendid example
of the aversion characteristic of scientific men to learning
something new. “Les savants ne sont pas curieux," said
the scoffer Anatole France. If there were such a thing in
science as right to revenge, I in turn should be justified in
ignoring the literature since the appearance of this book.
The few accounts that have appeared in scientific journals
are so full of folly and misconception that my only possible
answer to my critics would be to request them to read this
book over again. Perhaps also the request should be that
they read it as a whole.

In the works of those physicians who make use of the
psychoanalytic method of treatment (Jung, Abraham, Riklin,
Muthmann, Stekel, Rank, and others), an abundance of dreams
have been reported and interpreted in accordance with my

LITERATURE OF THE DREAM 79

instructions. In so far as these works go beyond the con-
firmation of my assertions I have noted their results in the
context of my discussion. A supplement to the literary
index at the end of this book brings together the most im-
portant of these new publications. The voluminous book on
the dream by Sante de Sanctis, of which a German translation
appeared soon after its publication, has, so to speak, crossed
with mine, so that I could take as little notice of him as the
Italian author could of me. Unfortunately, I am further
obliged to declare that this laborious work is exceedingly
poor in ideas, so poor that one could never divine from it the
existence of the problems treated by me.

I have finally to mention two publications which show a
near relation to my treatment of the dream problems. A
younger philosopher, H. Swoboda, who has undertaken to
extend W. Fliesse’s discovery of biological periodicity (in
groups of twenty-three and twenty-eight days) to the psychic
field, has produced an imaginative work,* in which, among
other things, he has used this key to solve the riddle of the
dream. The interpretation of dreams would herein have
fared badly; the material contained in dreams would be
explained through the coincidence of all those memories
which during the night complete one of the biological periods
for the first or the n-th time. A personal statement from the
author led me to assume that he himself no longer wished to
advocate this theory earnestly. But it seems I was mistaken
in this conclusion ; I shall report in another place some ob-
servations in reference to Swoboda's assertion, concerning the
conclusions of which I am, however, not convinced. It gave
me far greater pleasure to find accidentally, in an unexpected
place, a conception of the dream in essentials fully agreeing
with my own. The circumstances of time preclude the possi-
bility that this conception was influenced by a reading of my
book ; I must therefore greet this as the only demonstrable
concurrence in the literature with the essence of my dream
theory. The book which contains the passage concerning the
dream which I have in mind was published as a second edition
in 1900 by Lynkus under the title Phantasien eines Realisten.

* 11, Swoboda, Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus, 1904.