on the psychic activity in the dream, and especially when we declare that the higher intellectual 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,42 the incoherence of the dream picture is the only essential character of the dream.
Maury48 agrees with him; he says (p. 163) : "II n'y a pas des rêves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incohérence, quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité."
According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta,64 the dream lacks all objective and comprehensible connection.
Dugas19 says: "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."
"The relaxation, solution, and confusion of the presentation life which is held together through the logical force of the central ego" is conceded even by Volkelt72 (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 incondite, tam monstruose cogitari potest, quod non possimus somniare."
Fechner52 says (p. 522): "It is as if the psychological activity were transferred from the brain of a reasonable being into the brain of a fool."
Radestock35 (p. 145) says: "It seems indeed impossible to recognise in this absurd action any firm law. Having withdrawn itself from the strict police of the rational will guiding the waking presentation life, and of the attention, the dream whirls everything about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."
Hildebrandt35 (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."
Binz4 (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 imagination and thought."
Maury48 (p. 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 choreé et les affections paralytiques...." For the rest, he considers the dream "toute une série de dégradation 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 Strümpell,66 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,64 (p. 148) the presentations in the dream are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality. Radestock54 and others emphasize the weakness of judgment and decision in the dream. According to Jodl37 (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 Stricker77 78 (and many others), on the ground that facts are forgotten in the dream and logical relations between presentations 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,76 whose teaching has influenced so many other workers in the dream problems, positively admits this. One might inquire as to the kind and behaviour of the remnants of the psychic life which manifest themselves in the dream. It is now quite universally acknowledged that the reproductive capacity, the memory in the dream, seems to have been least affected; indeed it may show a certain superiority over the same function in the waking life (vid. supra, p. 10), although a part of the absurdities of the dream are to be explained by just this forgetfulness of the dream life. According to Spitta,64 it is the emotional life of the psyche that is not overtaken by sleep and that then directs the dream. "By emotion ["Gemüth"] we understand the constant comprehension of the feelings as the inmost subjective essence of man" (p. 84).
Scholz59 (p. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the dream in the "allegorising interpretation" to which the dream material is subjected. Siebeck62 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. Delbœuf16 confesses that he is unable to conceive this differentiation.
The laws of association which govern the connection of ideas hold true also for the dream pictures; indeed, their domination evinces itself in a purer and stronger expression in the dream than elsewhere. Strümpell62 (p. 70) says: "The dream follows either the laws of undisguised presentations as it seems exclusively or organic stimuli along with such presentations, that is, without being influenced by reflection and reason, aesthetic sense, and moral judgment." The authors whose views I reproduce here conceive the formation of the dream in about the following manner: The sum of sensation stimuli affecting sleep from the various sources, discussed elsewhere, at first awaken in the mind a sum of presentations which represent themselves as hallucinations (according to Wundt, it is more correct to say as illusions, because of their origin from outer and inner stimuli). These unite with one another according to the known laws of association, and, following the same rules, in turn evoke a new series of presentations (pictures). This entire material is then elaborated as well as possible by the still active remnant of the organising and thinking mental faculties (cf. Wundt76 and Weygandt75). 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
