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 sensations, 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[66] 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[1] 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 Tissié[68]
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 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,[54]
Spitta,[64] Maury, M. Simon, Tissié.) Tissié even assumes that the
diseased organs impress upon the dream content their characteristic
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 perceptible 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,[48] 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 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, distinguishable 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 presentations.
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
etiological 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 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,[58] and after him Volkelt,[72]
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[39] 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, consciousness 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 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,[58] we frequently find ourselves confronted with the awkward
fact that the organic exciting source reveals itself in the content of
the dream only.
A certain agreement, however, is manifested in the interpretation of the
various forms of dreams which have been designated as “typical” because
they recur in so many persons with almost the same 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 bedcover 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 Strümpell,[66] 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[63] endeavoured
to formulate certain rules for the influence of the 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. 35): “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 approximately 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.[I]
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 separating the part played by the
psychic and the somatic dream stimuli in individual dreams. But as a
matter of fact no such complete 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,[58] 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 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,[76] p. 365), but they cannot yet dismiss the doubt
whether “they do not appear without being impelled by the psychical
stimulus” (Volkelt,[72] 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 hallucinations, and that
probably most dream presentations are really illusions, inasmuch as they
emanate from slight sensory impressions which are never extinguished
during sleep” (p. 338, &c.). Weygandt[75] 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[68] goes still further in repressing
the psychic exciting sources (p. 183): “Les rêves d’origine absolument
psychique n’existent pas”; and elsewhere (p. 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 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 emphasized; 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 metaphysical 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 we 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 retentiveness 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
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
Strümpell.[66] This forgetting is evidently a complex phenomenon; for
Strümpell does not explain it by a single reason, but by a considerable
number of reasons.
In the first place, all those factors which produce forgetfulness 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,[J] 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 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[54] (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 counterpart 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 recalled
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[3]) 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 unfavourable 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.