In the foregoing words of Emerson, there is brought to bear on dreams an
energic conception of mind-action similar to that which Hobbes had developed
in his Leviathan in 1651. The latter, by analogy with conceptions of
mechanical inertia new in his time, had compared the persevering effect of
nervous stimuli to the continued agitation of waves of the sea after a
storm: "When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something else
hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindreth it, cannot in an instant, but
in time, quite extinguish it; and as we see in water, though the wind cease,
the waves give not over rolling for a long time after: so also it happeneth
in that motion, which is made in the internal parts of man, then, when he
sees, dreams, et cetera." (Cap. II)
The Delage-Woodworth conception that dreams are due to persevering effects
of unadjusted mental elements is not, therefore, entirely novel; but is
itself a maturing of opinions which have been more or less loosely
entertained by writers on dreams since Hobbes first formulated the modern
doctrine of the association of ideas,--not to go back any further. The
fertility of the conception of the "perseveration of the unadjusted" has
been emphasized in my mind by illustrations obtained by an extended study of
the dreams of normal people, and notably, by the agreement of my conclusions
with those of Professor Woodworth and of Dr. Morton Prince. And I am led to
believe that a development of this conception should harmonize with accepted
principles of psychology, normal and abnormal, as formulated in Ladd and
Woodworth's text-book, and in Prince's "The Unconscious."
Greater precision must be conferred upon this conception by showing
specifically in what ways, and by what associative mechanisms, the
persevering and unadjusted stimuli evoke the dream-images. Granting that
unadjusted stimuli persist in their effects upon dream life, or in other
terms, that primary stimulus-ideas may evoke secondary dream-images, and so
on unto the third and fourth "generations;" then, in what manner does the
process go on or come to an end? The answer to this question is an eminently
practical one, to which Psycho-analysis has already brought the complication
of its own still immature formulation of Ab-reaction and of Catharsis.[35]
The matter still requires further study. In particular, it is necessary to
formulate, through specific examples, a conception which shall be the
pendant or complement of the theory of the perseveration of the unadjusted,
and which I will call the "resolution of the unadjusted."
Already, I have taken the preliminary steps in this direction by adopting
the physiological conception of trial percepts and applying it to dream
interpretation. As a result, I have come to regard the successive
evocations of imagery in the dream and even their reciprocal adaptations
under the influence of creative fancy, as being trial apperceptions or
attempted responses to one or more cues, either sensory or psychic.