Autobiographical note 5 страница

Our scientific consideration of dreams starts off from the assumption that they are products of our own mental activity. Nevertheless the finished dream strikes us as something alien to us. We are so little obliged to acknowledge our responsibility for it that we are just as ready to say ‘mir hat geträumt’ [‘I had a dream’, literally ‘a dream came to me’] as ‘ich habe geträumt’ [‘I dreamt’]. What is the origin of this feeling that dreams are extraneous to our minds? In view of our discussion upon the sources of dreams, we must conclude that the strangeness cannot be due to the material that finds its way into their content, since that material is for the most part common to dreaming and waking life. The question arises whether in dreams there may not be modifications in the processes of the mind which produce the impression we are discussing; and we shall therefore make an attempt at drawing a picture of the psychological attributes of dreams.

No one has emphasized more sharply the essential difference between dreaming and waking life or drawn more far-reaching conclusions from it than G. T. Fechner in a passage in his Elemente der Psychophysik (1889, 2, 520-1). In his opinion, ‘neither the mere lowering of conscious mental life below the main threshold’, nor the withdrawal of attention from the influences of the external world, are enough to explain the characteristics of dream-life as contrasted with waking life. He suspects, rather, that the scene of action of dreams is different from that of waking ideational life. ‘If the scene of action of psychophysical activity were the same in sleeping and waking, dreams could, in my view, only be a prolongation at a lower degree of intensity of waking ideational life and, moreover, would necessarily be of the same material and form. But the facts are quite otherwise.’

It is not clear what Fechner had in mind in speaking of this change of location of mental activity; nor, so far as I know, has anyone else pursued the path indicated by his words. We may, I think, dismiss the possibility of giving the phrase an anatomical interpretation and supposing it to refer to physiological cerebral localization or even to the histological layers of the cerebral cortex. It may be, however, that the suggestion will eventually prove to be sagacious and fertile, if it can be applied to a mental apparatus built up of a number of agencies arranged in a series one behind the other.

Other writers have contented themselves with drawing attention to the more tangible of the distinguishing characteristics of dream-life and with taking them as a starting-point for attempts at more far reaching explanations.

It has justly been remarked that one of the principal peculiarities of dream-life makes its appearance during the very process of falling asleep and may be described as a phenomenon heralding sleep. According to Schleiermacher (1862, 351), what characterizes the waking state is the fact that thought-activity takes place in concepts and not in images. Now dreams think essentially in images; and with the approach of sleep it is possible to observe how, in proportion as voluntary activities become more difficult, involuntary ideas arise, all of which fall into the class of images. Incapacity for ideational work of the kind which we feel as intentionally willed and the emergence (habitually associated with such states of abstraction) of images - these are two characteristics which persevere in dreams and which the psychological analysis of dreams forces us to recognize as essential features of dream-life. We have already seen that these images - hypnagogic hallucinations - are themselves identical in their content with dream-images.¹

¹ [Footnote added 1911:] Silberer (1909) has given some nice examples of the way in which, in a drowsy state, even abstract thoughts become converted into pictorial plastic images which seek to express the same meaning. [

Added 1925:] I shall have occasion to return to this discovery in another connection.

Dreams, then, think predominantly in visual images - but not exclusively. They make use of auditory images as well, and, to a lesser extent, of impressions belonging to the other senses. Many things, too, occur in dreams (just as they normally do in waking life) simply as thoughts or ideas - probably, that is to say, in the form of residues of verbal presentations. Nevertheless, what are truly characteristic of dreams are only those elements of their content which behave like images, which are more like perceptions, that is, than they are like mnemic presentations. Leaving on one side all the arguments, so familiar to psychiatrists, on the nature of hallucinations, we shall be in agreement with every authority on the subject in asserting that dreams hallucinate - that they replace thoughts by hallucinations. In this respect there is no distinction between visual and acoustic presentations: it has been observed that if one falls asleep with the memory of a series of musical notes in one’s mind, the memory becomes transformed into an hallucination of the same melody; while, if one then wakes up again - and the two states may alternate more than once during the process of dropping asleep - the hallucination gives way in turn to the mnemic presentation, which is at once fainter and qualitatively different from it.

The transformation of ideas into hallucinations is not the only respect in which dreams differ from corresponding thoughts in waking life. Dreams construct a situation out of these images; they represent an event which is actually happening; as Spitta (1882, 145) puts it, they ‘dramatize’ an idea. But this feature of dream-life can only be fully understood if we further recognize that in dreams - as a rule, for there are exceptions which require special examination - we appear not to think but to experience; that is to say, we attach complete belief to the hallucinations. Not until we wake up does the critical comment arise that we have not experienced anything but have merely been thinking in a peculiar way, or in other words dreaming. It is this characteristic that distinguishes true dreams from day-dreaming, which is never confused with reality.

Burdach (1838, 502 f.) summarizes the features of dream-life which we have so far discussed in the following words: ‘These are among the essential features of dreams: (a) In dreams the subjective activity of our minds appears in an objective form, for our perceptive faculties regard the products of our imagination as though they were sense impressions... (b) Sleep signifies an end of the authority of the self. Hence falling asleep brings a certain degree of passivity along with it.... The images that accompany sleep can occur only on condition that the authority of the self is reduced.’

The next thing is to try to explain the belief which the mind accords to dream-hallucinations, a belief which can only arise after some kind of ‘authoritative’ activity of the self has ceased. Strümpell (1877) argues that in this respect the mind is carrying out its function correctly and in conformity with its own mechanism. Far from being mere presentations, the elements of dreams are true and real mental experiences of the same kind as arise in a waking state through the agency of the senses. (Ibid., 34.) The waking mind produces ideas and thoughts in verbal images and in speech; but in dreams it does so in true sensory images. (Ibid., 35.) Moreover, there is a spatial consciousness in dreams, since sensations and images are assigned to an external space, just as they are in waking. (Ibid., 36.) It must therefore be allowed that in dreams the mind is in the same relation to its images and perceptions as it is in waking. (Ibid., 43.) If it is nevertheless in error in so doing, that is because in the state of sleep it lacks the criterion which alone makes it possible to distinguish between sense-perceptions arising from without and from within. It is unable to submit its dream-images to the only tests which could prove their objective reality, In addition to this, it disregards the distinction between images which are only interchangeable arbitrarily and cases where the element of arbitrariness is absent. It is in error because it is unable to apply the law of causality to the content of its dreams. (Ibid., 50-1.) In short, the fact of its having turned away from the external world is also the reason for its belief in the subjective world of dreams.

Delboeuf (1885, 84) arrives at the same conclusion after somewhat different psychological arguments. We believe in the reality of dream-images, he says, because in our sleep we have no other impressions with which to compare them, because we are detached from the external world. But the reason why we believe in the truth of these hallucinations is not because it is impossible to put them to the test within the dream. A dream can seem to offer us such tests: it can let us touch the rose that we see - and yet we are dreaming. In Delboeuf’s opinion there is only one valid criterion of whether we are dreaming or awake, and that is the purely empirical one of the fact of waking up. I conclude that everything I experienced between falling asleep and waking up was illusory, when, on awaking, I find that I am lying undressed in bed. During sleep I took the dream images as real owing to my mental habit (which cannot be put to sleep) of assuming the existence of an external world with which I contrast my own ego.¹

¹ Haffner (1887, 243) attempts, like Delboeuf, to explain the activity of dreaming by the modification which the introduction of an abnormal condition must inevitably produce in the otherwise correct functioning of an intact mental apparatus; but he gives a somewhat different account of that condition. According to him the first mark of a dream is its independence of space and time, i. e. the fact of a presentation being emancipated from the position occupied by the subject in the spatial and temporal order of events. The second basic feature of dreams is connected with this - namely, the fact that hallucinations, phantasies and imaginary combinations are confused with external perceptions. ‘All the higher powers of the mind - in particular the formation of concepts and the powers of judgement and inference on the one hand and free self-determination on the other hand - are attached to sensory images and have at all times a background of such images. It follows, therefore, that these higher activities too take their part in the disorderliness of the dream-images. I say "take their part", since in them selves our powers of judgement and of will are in no way altered in sleep. Our activities are just as clear-sighted and just as free as in waking life. Even in his dreams a man cannot violate the laws of thought as such - he cannot, for instance, regard as identical things that appear to him as contraries, and so on. So too in dreams he can only desire what he looks upon as a good (sub ratione boni). But the human spirit is led astray in dreams in its application of the laws of thought and of will through confusing one idea with another. Thus it comes about that we are guilty of the grossest contradictions in dreams, while at the same time we can make the clearest judgements, draw the most logical inferences and come to the most virtuous and saintly decisions.... Lack of orientation is the whole secret of the flights taken by our imagination in dreams, and lack of critical reflection and of communication with other people is the main source of the unbridled extravagance exhibited in dreams by our judgements as well as by our hopes and wishes.’ (Ibid., 18.)

Detachment from the external world seems thus to be regarded as the factor determining the most marked features of dream-life. It is therefore worth while quoting some penetrating remarks made long ago by Burdach which throw light on the relations between the sleeping mind and the external world and which are calculated to prevent our setting too great store by the conclusions drawn in the last few pages. ‘Sleep’, he writes, ‘can occur only on condition that the mind is not irritated by sensory stimuli.... But the actual ‘recondition of sleep is not so much absence of sensory stimuli as absence of interest in them.¹ Some sense impressions may actually be necessary in order to calm the mind. Thus the miller can only sleep so long as he hears the clacking of his mill; and anyone who feels that burning a night-light is a necessary precaution, finds it impossible to get to sleep in the dark.’ (Burdach, 1838, 482.)

‘In sleep the mind isolates itself from the external world and withdraws from its own periphery.... Nevertheless connection is not broken off entirely. If we could not hear or feel while we were actually asleep, but only after we had woken up, it would be impossible to wake us at all.... The persistence of sensation is proved even more clearly by the fact that what rouses us is not always the mere sensory strength of an impression but its psychical context: a sleeping man is not aroused by an indifferent word, but if he is called by name he wakes.... Thus the mind in sleep distinguishes between sensations.... It is for that reason that the absence of a sensory stimulus can wake a man if it is related to something of ideational importance to him; so it is that the man with the night-light wakes if it is extinguished and the miller is roused if his mill comes to a stop. He is awakened, that is, by the cessation of a sensory activity; and this implies that that activity was perceived by him, but, since it was indifferent, or rather satisfying, did not disturb his mind.’ (Ibid., 485-6.)

Even if we disregard these objections - and they are by no means trifling ones -, we shall have to confess that the features of dream-life which we have considered hitherto, and which have been ascribed to its detachment from the external world, do not account completely for its strange character. For it should be possible otherwise to turn the hallucinations in a dream back into ideas, and its situations into thoughts, and in that way to solve the problem of dream-interpretation. And that in fact is what we are doing when, after waking, we reproduce a dream from memory; but, whether we succeed in making this re-translation wholly or only in part, the dream remains no less enigmatic than before.

¹ [Footnote added 1914:] Cf. the ‘désintérêt’ which Claparède (1905, 306 f.) regards as the mechanism of falling asleep.

And indeed all the authorities unhesitatingly assume that yet other and more deep-going modifications of the ideational material of waking life take place in dreams. Strümpell (1877, 27-8) has endeavoured to put his finger on one such modification in the following passage: ‘With the cessation of sensory functioning and of normal vital consciousness, the mind loses the soil in which its feelings, desires, interests and activities are rooted. The psychical states, too - feelings, interests, judgements of value - which are linked to mnemic images in waking life, are subjected to... an obscuring pressure, as a result of which their connection with those images is broken; perceptual images of things, persons, places, events and actions in waking life are reproduced separately in great numbers, but none of them carries its psychical value along with it. That value is detached from them and they thus float about in the mind at their own sweet will....’ According to Strümpell, the fact of images being denuded of their psychical value (which in turn goes back to detachment from the external world) plays a principal part in creating the impression of strangeness which distinguishes dreams from actual life in our memory.

We have seen that falling asleep at once involves the loss of one of our mental activities, namely our power of giving intentional guidance to the sequence of our ideas. We are now faced by the suggestion, which is in any case a plausible one, that the effects of the state of sleep may extend over all the faculties of the mind. Some of these seem to be entirely suspended; but the question now arises whether the rest continue to operate normally and whether under such conditions they are capable of normal work. And here it may be asked whether the distinguishing features of dreams cannot be explained by the lowering of psychical efficiency in the sleeping state - a notion which finds support in the impression made by dreams on our waking judgement. Dreams are disconnected, they accept the most violent contradictions without the least objection, they admit impossibilities, they disregard knowledge which carries great weight with us in the daytime, they reveal us as ethical and moral imbeciles. Anyone who when he was awake behaved in the sort of way that is shown in situations in dreams would be considered insane. Anyone who when he was awake talked in the sort of way that people talk in dreams or described the sort of thing that happens in dreams would give us the impression of being muddle-headed or feeble minded. It seems to be no more than putting the truth into words when we express our very low opinion of mental activity in dreams and assert that in dreams the higher intellectual faculties in particular are suspended or at all events gravely impaired.

The authorities display unusual unanimity - exceptions will be treated later - in expressing opinions of this kind on dreams; and these judgements lead directly to a particular theory or explanation of dream-life. But it is time for me to leave generalities and to give instead a series of quotations from various writers - philosophers and physicians - upon the psychological characteristics of dreams.

According to Lemoine (1855), the ‘incoherence’ of dream images is the one essential characteristic of dreams.

Maury (1878, 163) agrees with him: ‘II n’y a pas de rêves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incohérence, quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité.’ ¹

Spitta quotes Hegel as saying that dreams are devoid of all objectives and reasonable coherence.

Dugas writes: ‘Le rêve c’est l’anarchie psychique affective et mentale, c’est le jeu des fonctions livrées à ellesmêmes et s’exerçant sans contrôle et sans but; dans le rêve l’esprit est un automate spirituel.’ ²

Even Volkelt (1875, 14), whose theory is far from regarding psychical activity during sleep as purposeless, speaks of ‘the relaxing, disconnecting and confusing of ideational life, which in the waking state is held together by the logical force of the central ego.’

The absurdity of the associations of ideas that occur in dreams could scarcely be criticized more sharply than it was by Cicero (De divinatione, II): ‘Nihil tam praepostere, tam in condite, tam monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus somniare.’ ³

Fechner (1889, 2, 522) writes: ‘It is as though psychological activity had been transported from the brain of a reasonable man into that of a fool.’

¹ [‘There are no dreams that are absolutely reasonable and that do not contain some incoherence, anachronism or absurdity.’]

² [‘A dream is psychical, emotional and mental anarchy; it is the play of functions left to their own devices and acting without control or purpose; in dreams the spirit becomes a spiritual automaton.’]

³ [‘There is no imaginable thing too absurd, too involved, or too abnormal for us to dream about it.’]

Radestock (1879, 145): ‘In fact it seems impossible to detect any fixed laws in this crazy activity. After withdrawing from the strict policing exercised over the course of waking ideas by the rational will and the attention, dreams melt into a mad whirl of kaleidoscopic confusion.’

Hildebrandt (1875, 45): ‘What astonishing leaps a dreamer may make, for instance, in drawing inferences! How calmly he is prepared to see the most familiar lessons of experience turned upside down. What laughable contradictions he is ready to accept in the laws of nature and society before, as we say, things get beyond a joke and the excessive strain of nonsense wakes him up. We calculate without a qualm that three times three make twenty; we are not in the least surprised when a dog quotes a line of poetry, or when a dead man walks to his grave on his own legs, or when we see a rock floating on the water; we proceed gravely on an important mission to the Duchy of Bernburg or to the Principality of Liechtenstein to inspect their naval forces; or we are persuaded to enlist under Charles XII shortly before the battle of Poltava.’

Binz (1878, 33), having in mind the theory of dreams which is based upon such impressions as these, writes: ‘The content of at least nine out of ten dreams is nonsensical. We bring together in them people and things that have no connection whatever with one another. Next moment there is a shift in the kaleidoscope and we are faced by a new grouping, more senseless and crazy, if possible, than the last. And so the changing play of the incompletely sleeping brain goes on, till we awake and clasp our forehead and wonder whether we still possess the capacity for rational ideas and thoughts.’

Maury (1878, 50) finds a parallel to the relation between dream-images and waking thoughts which will be highly significant to physicians: ‘La production de ces images que chez l’homme éveillé fait le plus souvent naître la volonté, correspond, pour l’intelligence, à ce que sont pour la motilité certains mouvements que nous offre la choreé et les affections paralytiques...’ He further regards dreams as ‘toute une série de dégradations de la faculté pensante et raisonnante.’ (Ibid., 27.)

It is scarcely necessary to quote the writers who repeat Maury’s opinion in relation to the various higher mental functions. Strümpell (1877, 26), for instance, remarks that in dreams - even, of course, where there is no manifest nonsense - there is an eclipse of all the logical operations of the mind which are based on relations and connections. Spitta (1882, 148) declares that ideas that occur in dreams seem to be completely withdrawn from the law of causality. Radestock (1879,) and other writers insist upon the weakness of judgement and inference characteristic of dreams. According to Jodl (1896, 123), there is no critical faculty in dreams, no power of correcting one set of perceptions by reference to the general content of consciousness. The same author remarks that ‘every kind of conscious activity occurs in dreams, but only in an incomplete, inhibited and isolated fashion.’ The contradictions with our waking knowledge in which dreams are involved are explained by Stricker (1879, 98) and many others as being due to facts being forgotten in dreams or to logical relations between ideas having disappeared. And so on, and so on.

Nevertheless, the writers who in general take so unfavourable a view of psychical functioning in dreams allow that a certain remnant of mental activity still remains in them. This is explicitly admitted by Wundt, whose theories have had a determining influence on so many other workers in this field. What, it may be asked, is the nature of the remnant of normal mental activity which persists in dreams? There is fairly general agreement that the reproductive faculty, the memory, seems to have suffered least, and indeed that it shows a certain superiority to the same function in waking life (see Section B above), though some part of the absurdities of dreaming seems to be explicable by its forgetfulness. In the opinion of Spitta (1882, 84 f.) the part of the mind which is not affected by sleep is the life of the sentiments and it is this which directs dreams. By ‘sentiment’ [‘Gemüt’] he means ‘the stable assemblage of feelings which constitutes the innermost subjective essence of a human being’.

Scholz (1893, 64) believes that one of the mental activities operating in dreams is a tendency to subject the dream material to ‘re-interpretation in allegorical terms’. Siebeck too (1877, 11) sees in dreams a faculty of the mind for ‘wider interpretation’, which is exercised upon all sensations and perceptions. There is particular difficulty in assessing the position in dreams of what is ostensibly the highest of the psychical functions, that of consciousness. Since all that we know of dreams is derived from consciousness, there can be no doubt of its persisting in them; yet Spitta (1882, 84-5) believes that what persists in dreams is only consciousness and not self-consciousness. Delboeuf (1885, 19), however, confesses that he is unable to follow the distinction.

The laws of association governing the sequence of ideas hold good of dream-images, and indeed their dominance is even more clearly and strongly expressed in dreams. ‘Dreams’, says Strümpell (1877, 70), ‘run their course, as it seems, according to the laws either of bare ideas or of organic stimuli accompanying such ideas - that is, without being in any way affected by reflection or common-sense or aesthetic taste or moral judgement.’

The authors whose views I am now giving picture the process of forming dreams in some such way as this. The totality of the sensory stimuli generated during sleep from the various sources which I have already enumerated arouse in the mind in the first place a number of ideas, which are represented in the form of hallucinations or more properly, according to Wundt, of illusions, in view of their derivation from external and internal stimuli. These ideas become linked together according to the familiar laws of association and, according to the same laws, call up a further series of ideas (or images). The whole of this material is then worked over, so far as it will allow, by what still remain in operation of the organizing and thinking faculties of the mind. (See, for instance, Wundt and Weygandt.) All that remain undiscovered are the motives which decide whether the calling up of images arising from non-external sources shall proceed along one chain of associations or another.

It has often been remarked, however, that the associations connecting dream-images with one another are of a quite special kind and differ from those which operate in waking thought. Thus Volkelt (1875, 15) writes: ‘In dreams the associations seem to play at catch-as-catch-can in accordance with chance similarities and connections that are barely perceptible. Every dream is stuffed full of slovenly and perfunctory associations of this kind.’ Maury (1878, 126) attaches very great importance to this feature of the way in which ideas are linked in dreams, since it enables him to draw a close analogy between dream-life and certain mental disorders. He specifies two main features of a ‘délire’: ‘(1) une action spontanée et comme automatique de l’esprit; (2) une association vicieuse et irrégulière des idées.’ ¹ Maury himself gives two excellent instances of dreams of his own in which dream-images were linked together merely through a similarity in the sound of words. He once dreamt that he was on a pilgrimage (pélerinage) to Jerusalem or Mecca; after many adventures he found himself visiting Pelletier, the chemist, who, after some conversation, gave him a zinc shovel (pelle); in the next part of the dream this turned into a great broad-sword. (Ibid., 137.) In another dream he was walking along a highway and reading the number of kilometres on the milestones; then he was in a grocer’s shop where there was a big pair of scales, and a man was putting kilogramme weights into the scale in order to weigh Maury; the grocer then said to him: ‘You’re not in Paris but on the island of Gilolo.’ Several other scenes followed, in which he saw a Lobelia flower, and then General Lopez, of whose death he had read shortly before. Finally, while he was playing a game of lotto, he woke up. (Ibid., 126.)²

We shall no doubt be prepared to find, however, that this low estimate of psychical functioning in dreams has not been allowed to pass without contradiction - though contradiction on this point would seem to be no easy matter. For instance, Spitta (1882, 118), one of the disparagers of dream-life, insists that the same psychological laws which regulate waking life also hold good in dreams; and another, Dugas (1897a), declares that ‘le rêve n’est pas déraison ni même irraison pure’.³ But such assertions carry little weight so long as their authors make no attempt to reconcile them with their own descriptions of the psychical anarchy and disruption of every function that prevail in dreams. It seems, however, to have dawned upon some other writers that the madness of dreams may not be without method and may even be simulated, like that of the Danish prince on whom this shrewd judgement was passed. These latter writers cannot have judged by appearances; or the appearance presented to them by dreams must have been a different one.

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