CHAPTER ONE (CONTINUED...)
G. Dream-Theories and the Function of the Dream
A statement concerning the dream which seeks to explain
as many as possible of its observed characteristics from a single point of
view, and which at the same time defines the relation of the dream to a
more comprehensive sphere of phenomena, may be described as a theory of
the dream. The individual theories of the dream will be distinguished from
one another by their designating as essential this or that characteristic
of dreams, and relating thereto their data and their explanations. It is
not absolutely necessary that we should deduce from the theory of the
dream a function, i.e., a use or any such similar role, but expectation,
being as a matter of habit teleologically inclined, will nevertheless
welcome those theories which afford us some insight into a function of
dreams.
We have already become acquainted with many conceptions
of the dream, which in this sense are more or less deserving of the name
of dream-theories. The belief of the ancients that dreams were sent by the
gods in order to guide the actions of man was a complete theory of the
dream, which told them all that was worth knowing about dreams. Since
dreams have become an object of biological research we have a greater
number of theories, some of which, however, are very incomplete.
Provided we make no claim to completeness, we might
venture on the following rough grouping of dream-theories, based on their
fundamental conception of the degree and mode of the psychic activity in
dreams:
1. Theories, like those of Delboeuf, which allow the
full psychic activity of the waking state to continue in our dreams. Here
the psyche does not sleep; its apparatus remains intact; but under the
conditions of the sleeping state, which differ from those of the waking
state, it must in its normal functioning give results which differ from
those of the waking state. As regards these theories, it may be questioned
whether their authors are in a position to derive the distinction between
dreaming and waking thought entirely from the conditions of the sleeping
state. Moreover, they lack one possible access to a function of dreams;
one does not understand to what purpose one dreams- why the complicated
mechanism of the psychic apparatus should continue to operate even when it
is placed under conditions to which it does not appear to be adapted.
There are only two purposeful reactions in the place of the reaction of
dreaming: to sleep dreamlessly, or to wake when affected by disturbing
stimuli.
2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the
dream a diminution of the psychic activity, a loosening of connections,
and an impoverishment of the available material. In accordance with these
theories, one must assume for sleep a psychological character entirely
different from that given by Delboeuf. Sleep encroaches widely upon the
psyche; it does not consist in the mere shutting it off from the outer
world; on the contrary, it enters into its mechanism, and makes it for the
time being unserviceable. If I may draw a comparison from psychiatry, I
would say that the first group of theories construes the dream like a
paranoia, while the second represents it as a type of mental deficiency or
amentia.
The theory that only a fragment of the psychic activity
paralysed by sleep finds expression in dreams is that by far the most
favoured by medical writers, and by scientists in general. In so far as
one may presuppose a general interest in dream-interpretation, one may
indeed describe it as the most popular theory of dreams. It is remarkable
how nimbly this particular theory avoids the greatest danger that
threatens every dream-interpretation; that is, shipwreck on one of the
contrasts incorporated in dreams. Since this theory regards dreams as the
result of a partial waking (or, as Herbart puts it in his Psychologie uber
den Traum, "a gradual, partial, and at the same time very anomalous
waking"), it is able to cover the whole series, from the inferior
activities of dreams, which betray themselves by their absurdity, to fully
concentrated intellectual activity, by a series of states of progressive
awakening, ending in complete wakefulness.
Those who find the physiological mode of expression
indispensable, or who deem it more scientific, will find this theory of
dreams summarized in Binz's description (p. 43):
"This state (of torpor), however, gradually comes to an
end in the hours of early morning. The accumulated products of fatigue in
the albumen of the brain gradually diminish. They are slowly decomposed,
or carried away by the constantly flowing blood-stream. Here and there
individual groups of cells can be distinguished as being awake, while
around them all is still in a state of torpidity. The isolated work of the
individual groups now appears before our clouded consciousness, which is
still powerless to control other parts of the brain, which govern the
associations. Hence the pictures created, which for the most part
correspond to the objective impressions of the immediate past, combine
with one another in a wild and uncontrolled fashion. As the number of
brain-cells set free constantly increases, the irrationality of the dream
becomes constantly less."
The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial
waking state, or traces of the influence of this conception, will of
course be found in the works of all the modern physiologists and
philosophers. It is most completely represented by Maury. It often seems
as though this author conceives the state of being awake or asleep as
susceptible of shifting from one anatomical region to another; each
anatomical region seeming to him to be connected with a definite psychic
function. Here I will merely suggest that even if the theory of partial
waking were confirmed, its finer superstructure would still call for
exhaustive consideration.
No function of dreams, of course, can emerge from this
conception of the dream-life. On the contrary, Binz, one of the chief
proponents of this theory, consistently enough denies that dreams have any
status or importance. He says (p. 357): "All the facts, as we see them,
urge us to characterize the dream as a physical process, in all cases
useless, and in many cases definitely morbid."
The expression physical in reference to dreams (the
word is emphasized by the author) points, of course, in more than one
direction. In the first place, it refers to the aetiology of dreams, which
was of special interest to Binz, as he was studying the experimental
production of dreams by the administration of drugs. It is certainly in
keeping with this kind of dream-theory to ascribe the incitement to
dreaming, whenever possible, exclusively to somatic origins. Presented in
the most extreme form the theory is as follows: After we have put
ourselves to sleep by the banishment of stimuli, there would be no need to
dream, and no reason for dreaming until the morning, when the gradual
awakening through the fresh invasion of stimuli might be reflected in the
phenomenon of dreaming. But, as a matter of fact, it is not possible to
protect our sleep from stimuli; like the germs of life of which
Mephistopheles complained, stimuli come to the sleeper from all
directions- from without, from within, and even from all those bodily
regions which never trouble us during the waking state. Thus our sleep is
disturbed; now this, now that little corner of the psyche is jogged into
the waking state, and the psyche functions for a while with the awakened
fraction, yet is thankful to fall asleep again. The dream is the reaction
to the disturbance of sleep caused by the stimulus, but it is, when all is
said, a purely superfluous reaction.
The description of the dream- which, after all, remains
an activity of the psychic organ- as a physical process has yet another
connotation. So to describe it is to deny that the dream has the dignity
of a psychic process. The old simile of "the ten fingers of a person
ignorant of music running over the keyboard of an instrument" perhaps best
illustrates in what esteem the dream is commonly held by the
representatives of exact science. Thus conceived, it becomes something
wholly insusceptible of interpretation. How could the ten fingers of a
player ignorant of music perform a musical composition?
The theory of partial wakefulness did not escape
criticism even by the earlier writers. Thus Burdach wrote in 1830: "If we
say that dreaming is a partial waking, then, in the first place, neither
the waking nor the sleeping state is explained thereby; secondly, this
amounts only to saying that certain powers of the mind are active in
dreams while others are at rest. But such irregularities occur throughout
life..." (p. 482).
The prevailing dream-theory which conceives the dream
as a "physical" process finds a certain support in a very interesting
conception of the dream which was first propounded by Robert in 1866, and
which is seductive because it assigns to the dream a function or a useful
result. As the basis of his theory Robert takes two objectively observable
facts which we have already discussed in our consideration of
dream-material (chapter I., B). These facts are: (1) that one very often
dreams about the most insignificant impressions of the day; and (2) that
one rarely carries over into the dream the absorbing interests of the day.
Robert asserts as an indisputable fact that those matters which have been
fully settled and solved never evoke dreams, but only such as lie
incompleted in the mind, or touch it merely in passing (p. 10). "For this
reason we cannot usually explain our dreams, since their causes are to be
found in sensory impressions of the preceding day which have not attained
sufficient recognition on the part of the dreamer." The condition
permitting an impression to reach the dream is, therefore, that this
impression has been disturbed in its elaboration, or that it was too
insignificant to lay claim to such elaboration.
Robert therefore conceives the dream "as a physical
process of elimination which in its psychic reaction reaches the
consciousness." Dreams are eliminations of thoughts nipped in the bud. "A
man deprived of the capacity for dreaming would in time become mentally
unbalanced, because an immense number of unfinished and unsolved thoughts
and superficial impressions would accumulate in his brain, under the
pressure of which all that should be incorporated in the memory as a
completed whole would be stifled." The dream acts as a safety-valve for
the over-burdened brain. Dreams possess a healing and unburdening power
(p. 32).
We should misunderstand Robert if we were to ask him
how representation in the dream could bring about an unburdening of the
mind. The writer apparently concluded from these two peculiarities of the
dream-material that during sleep such an elimination of worthless
impressions is effected somehow as a somatic process; and that dreaming is
not a special psychic process, but only the information which we receive
of such elimination. Moreover, elimination is not the only thing that
takes place in the mind during sleep. Robert himself adds that the stimuli
of the day are likewise elaborated, and "what cannot be eliminated from
the undigested thought-material lying in the mind is bound up into a
completed whole by mental clues borrowed from the imagination, and is thus
enrolled in the memory as a harmless phantasy-picture" (p. 23).
But it is in his criticism of the sources of dreams
that Robert is most flatly opposed to the prevailing theory. Whereas
according to this theory there would be no dream if the external and
internal sensory stimuli did not repeatedly wake the mind, according to
Robert the impulse to dream lies in the mind itself. It lies in the
overloading of the mind, which demands discharge, and Robert considers,
quite consistently, that those causes conditioning the dream which depend
on the physical condition assume a subordinate rank, and could not incite
dreams in a mind which contained no material for dream-formation derived
from the waking consciousness. It is admitted, however, that the phantasy-images
originating in the depths of the mind may be influenced by nervous stimuli
(p. 48). Thus, according to Robert, dreams are not, after all, wholly
dependent on the somatic element. Dreaming is, of course, not a psychic
process, and it has no place among the psychic processes of the waking
state; it is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus of mental
activity, and has a function to perform, viz., to guard this apparatus
against excessive strain, or, if we may be allowed to change the
comparison, to cleanse the mind.
Another author, Yves Delage, bases his theory on the
same characteristics of the dream- characteristics which are perceptible
in the selection of the dream-material, and it is instructive to observe
how a trifling twist in the conception of the same things gives a final
result entirely different in its bearings. Delage, having lost through
death a person very dear to him, found that we either do not dream at all
of what occupies us intently during the day, or that we begin to dream of
it only after it is overshadowed by the other interests of the day. His
investigations in respect of other persons corroborated the universality
of this state of affairs. Concerning the dreams of newly-married people,
he makes a comment which is admirable if it should prove to be generally
true: "S'ils ont ete fortement epris, presque jamais ils n'ont reve l'un
de l'autre avant le mariage ou pendant la lune de miel; et s'ils ont reve
d'amour c'est pour etre infideles avec quelque personne indifferente ou
odieuse." * But of what does one dream? Delage recognizes that the
material of our dreams consists of fragments and remnants of impressions,
both from the last few days and from earlier periods. All that appears in
our dreams, all that we may at first be inclined to consider the creation
of the dream-life, proves on closer investigation to be unrecognized
reproduction, "souvenir inconscient." But this representative material
reveals one common characteristic; 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 occurrence. The
less conscious, and at the same time the stronger an impression, the
greater the prospect of its playing a part in our next dream.
* If they are very much in love, they have almost never
dreamed of each other before the marriage or during the honeymoon; and if
they have dreamed of love, it was to be unfaithful with someone
unimportant or distasteful.
These two categories of impressions- the insignificant
and the undisposed-of- are essentially the same as those which were
emphasized by Robert, but Delage gives them another significance, inasmuch
as he believes that these impressions are capable of exciting dreams not
because they are indifferent, but because they are not disposed of. The
insignificant impressions also are, in a sense, not fully disposed of;
they, too, owing to their character of new impressions, are "autant de
ressorts tendus," * which will be relaxed during sleep. Still more
entitled to a role in the dream than a weak and almost unnoticed
impression is a vivid impression which has been accidentally retarded in
its elaboration, or intentionally repressed. The psychic energy
accumulated during the day by inhibition or suppression becomes the
mainspring of the dream at night. In dreams psychically suppressed
material achieves expression. *(2)
* So many taut lines.
*(2) A novelist, Anatole France, expresses himself to a
similar effect (Le Lys Rouge): "Ce que nous voyons la nuit ce sont les
restes malheureux que nous avons neglige dans la veille. Le reve est
souvent la revanche des choses qu'on meprise ou le reproche des etres
abandonnes." [What we see at night are the unhappy relics that we
neglected while awake. The dream is often the revenge of things scorned or
the reproach of beings deserted.]
Unfortunately Delage does not pursue this line of
thought any farther; he is able to ascribe only the most insignificant
role in our dreams to an independent psychic activity, and thus, in his
theory of dreams, he reverts to the prevailing doctrine of a partial
slumber of the brain: "En somme le reve est le produit de la pensee
errante, sans but et sans direction, se fixant successivement sur les
souvenirs, qui ont garde assez d'intensite pour se placer sur sa route et
l'arreter au passage, etablissant entre eux un lien tantot faible et
indecis, tantot plus fort et plus serre, selon que l'activite actuelle du
cerveau est plus ou moins abolie par le sommeil." *
* In short, the dream is the product of wandering
thought, without end or direction, successively fixing on memories which
have retained sufficient intensity to put themselves in the way and block
the passage, establishing between themselves a connection sometimes weak
and loose, sometimes stronger and closer, according to whether the actual
work of the brain is more or less suppressed by sleep.
3. In a third group we may include those dream-theories
which ascribe to the dreaming mind the capacity for and propensity to
special psychic activities, which in the waking state it is able to exert
either not at all or imperfectly. In most cases the manifestation of these
activities is held to result in a useful function of dreams. The
evaluations of dreams by the earlier psychologists fall chiefly within
this category. I shall content myself, however, with quoting in their
stead the assertion of Burdach, to the effect that dreaming "is the
natural activity of the mind, which is not limited by the power of the
individuality, nor disturbed by self-consciousness, nor directed by
self-determination, but is the vitality of the sensible focus indulging in
free play" (p. 486).
Burdach and others evidently consider this revelling in
the free use of its own powers as a state in which the mind refreshes
itself and gathers fresh strength for the day's work; something, indeed,
after the fashion of a vacation. Burdach therefore cites with approval the
admirable words in which the poet Novalis lauds the power of the dream:
"The dream is a bulwark against the regularity and commonplace character
of life, a free recreation of the fettered phantasy, in which it
intermingles all the images of life and interrupts the constant
seriousness of the adult by the joyful play of the child. Without the
dream we should surely grow old earlier, so that the dream may be
considered, if not precisely as a gift from above, yet as a delightful
exercise, a friendly companion on our pilgrimage to the grave."
The refreshing and healing activity of dreams is even
more impressively described by Purkinje (p. 456). "The productive dreams
in particular would perform these functions. These are the unconstrained
play of the imagination, and have no connection with the events of the
day. The mind is loth to continue the tension of the waking life, but
wishes to relax it and recuperate from it. It creates, in the first place
conditions opposed to those of the waking state. It cures sadness by joy,
worry by hope and cheerfully distracting images, hatred by love and
friendliness, and fear by courage and confidence; it appeases doubt by
conviction and firm belief, and vain expectation by realization. Sleep
heals many sore spots in the mind, which the day keeps continually open,
by covering them and guarding them against fresh irritation. On this
depends in some degree the consoling action of time." We all feel that
sleep is beneficial to the psychic life, and the vague surmise of the
popular consciousness is apparently loth to surrender the notion that
dreaming is one of the ways in which sleep bestows its benefits.
The most original and most comprehensive attempt to
explain dreaming as a special activity of the mind, which can freely
unfold itself only in the sleeping state, is that made by Scherner in
1861. Scherner's book is written in a heavy and bombastic style and is
inspired by an almost intoxicated enthusiasm for the subject, which is
bound to repel us unless it can carry us away with it. It places so many
difficulties in the way of an analysis that we gladly resort to the
clearer and conciser presentation of Scherner's theories made by the
philosopher Volkelt: "From these mystical conglomerations, from all these
outbursts of splendour and radiance, there indeed flashes and shines an
ominous semblance of meaning; but the path of the philosopher is not
illumined thereby." Such is the criticism of Scherner's exposition by one
of his own followers.
Scherner is not one of those writers for whom the mind
carries its undiminished faculties into the dream-life. He even explains
how, in our dreams, the centrality and spontaneous energy of the ego
become enervated; how cognition, feeling, will, and imagination are
transformed by this decentralization; how the remnant of these psychic
forces has not a truly intellectual character, but is rather of the nature
of a mechanism. But, on the other hand, that activity of the psyche which
may be described as phantasy, freed from all rational governance, and
hence no longer strictly controlled, rises to absolute supremacy in our
dreams. To be sure, it borrows all its building-material from the memory
of the waking state, but with this material it builds up structures which
differ from those of the waking state as day differs from night. In our
dreams it reveals itself as not only reproductive but also productive. Its
peculiarities give the dream-life its singular character. It shows a
preference for the unlimited, the exaggerated, the prodigious; but by its
liberation from the inhibiting categories of thought, it gains a greater
flexibility and agility, and indulges in pleasurable turns. It is
excessively sensitive to the delicate emotional stimuli of the mind, to
its stirring and disturbing affects, and it rapidly recasts the inner life
into an external, plastic visibility. The dream-phantasy lacks the
language of concepts. What it wishes to say it must express in visible
form; and since in this case the concept does not exert an inhibitory
control, it depicts it in all the fulness, power, and breadth of visible
form. But hereby its language, plain though it is, becomes cumbersome,
awkward, and prolix. Plain speaking is rendered especially difficult by
the fact that it dislikes expressing an object by its actual image, but
prefers to select an alien image, if only the latter is able to express
that particular aspect of the object which it is anxious to represent.
Such is the symbolizing activity of the phantasy.... It is, moreover, very
significant that the dream-phantasy reproduces objects not in detail, but
only in outline, and in the freest possible manner. Its paintings,
therefore, are like light and brilliant sketches. The dream-phantasy,
however, does not stop at the mere representation of the object, but feels
an internal urge to implicate the dream-ego to some extent with the
object, and thus to give rise to action. The visual dream, for example,
depicts gold coins lying 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 consists preponderantly of the
organic sensory stimuli which are so obscure during the day (cf. p. 151
above); hence it is that the over-fantastic theory of Scherner, and
perhaps too matter-of-fact theories of Wundt and other physiologists,
though otherwise diametrically opposed to each other, are in perfect
agreement in their assumptions with regard to dream-sources and
dream-stimuli. But whereas, according to the physiological theory, the
psychic reaction to the inner physical stimuli becomes exhausted with the
arousing of any of the ideas appropriate to these stimuli (as these ideas
then, by way of association, call to their aid other ideas, so that on
reaching this stage the chain of psychic processes appears to terminate),
according to Scherner, on the other hand, the physical stimuli merely
supply the psyche with material which it may utilize in fulfilling its
phantastic intentions. For Scherner dream-formation begins where,
according to the views of other writers, it comes to an end.
What the dream-phantasy does with the physical stimuli
cannot, of course, be regarded as purposeful. The phantasy plays a
tantalizing game with them, and represents the organic source of the
stimuli of the dream in question by any sort of plastic symbolism. Indeed,
Scherner holds- though here Volkelt and others differ from him- that the
dream-phantasy has a certain favourite symbol for the organism as a whole:
namely, the house. Fortunately, however, for its representations, it does
not seem to limit itself to this material; it may also employ a whole
series of houses to designate a single organ; for example, very long
streets of houses for the intestinal stimulus. In other dreams particular
parts of the house may actually represent particular regions of the body,
as in the headache-dream, when the ceiling of the room (which the dream
sees covered with disgusting toad-like spiders) represents the head.
Quite apart from the symbol of the house, any other
suitable object may be employed to represent those parts of the body which
excite the dream. "Thus the breathing lungs find their symbol in the
flaming stove with its windy roaring, the heart in hollow chests and
baskets, the bladder in round, ball-shaped, or simply hollow objects. The
man's dreams, when due to the sexual stimulus, make the dreamer find in
the street the upper portion of a clarinet, or the mouthpiece of a
tobacco-pipe, or, again, a piece of fur. The clarinet and tobacco-pipe
represent the approximate form of the male sexual organ, while the fur
represents the pubic hair. In the sexual dreams of the female, the
tightness of the closed thighs may be symbolized by a narrow courtyard
surrounded by houses, and the vagina by a very narrow, slippery and soft
footpath, leading through the courtyard, upon which the dreamer is obliged
to walk, in order perhaps to carry a letter to a man" (Volkelt, p. 39). It
is particularly noteworthy that at the end of such a physically stimulated
dream the phantasy, as it were, unmasks itself by representing the
exciting organ or its function unconcealed. Thus the "tooth-excited dream"
usually ends with the dreamer taking a tooth out of his mouth.
The dream-phantasy may, however, direct its attention
not merely to the form of the exciting organ, but may even make the
substance contained therein the object of symbolization. Thus, for
example, the dream excited by the intestinal stimuli may lead us through
muddy streets, the dream due to stimuli from the bladder to foaming water.
Or the stimulus as such, the nature of its excitation, and the object
which it covets, are represented symbolically. Or, again, the dream-ego
enters into a concrete association with the symbolization of its own
state; as, for example, when in the case of painful stimuli we struggle
desperately with vicious dogs or raging bulls, or when in a sexual dream
the dreamer sees herself pursued by a naked man. Disregarding all the
possible prolixity of elaboration, a phantastic symbolizing activity
remains as the central force of every dream. Volkelt, in his fine and
enthusiastic essay, attempted to penetrate still further into the
character of this phantasy, and to assign to the psychic activity thus
recognized its position in a system of philosophical ideas, which,
however, remains altogether too difficult of comprehension for anyone who
is not prepared by previous training for the intuitive comprehension of
philosophical modes of thought.
Scherner attributes no useful function to the activity
of the symbolizing phantasy in dreams. In dreams the psyche plays with the
stimuli which are offered to it. One might conjecture that it plays in a
mischievous fashion. And we might be asked whether our detailed
consideration of Scherner's dream-theory, the arbitrariness of which, and
its deviation from the rules of all forms of research are only too
obvious, can lead to any useful results. We might fitly reply that to
reject Scherner's theory without previous examination would be imposing
too arrogant a veto. This theory is based on the impressions produced by
his dreams on a man who paid close attention to them, and who would appear
to be personally very well equipped for tracing obscure psychic phenomena.
Furthermore, it treats of a subject which (though rich in its contents and
relations) has for thousands of years appeared mysterious to humanity, and
to the elucidation of which science, strictly so called, has, as it
confesses, contributed nothing beyond attempting- in uncompromising
opposition to popular sentiment- to deny its content and significance.
Finally, let us frankly admit that it seems as though we cannot very well
avoid the phantastical in our attempts to explain dreams. We must remember
also that there is such a thing as a phantasy of ganglion cells; the
passage cited (p. 87) from a sober and exact investigator like Binz, which
describes how the dawn of awakening floods the dormant cell-masses of the
cerebral cortex, is not a whit less fanciful and improbable than
Scherner's attempts at interpretation. I hope to be able to demonstrate
that there is something real underlying these attempts, though the
phenomena which he describes have been only vaguely recognized, and do not
possess the character of universality that should entitle them to be the
basis of a theory of dreams. For the present, Scherner's theory of dreams,
in contrast to the medical theory, may perhaps lead us to realize between
what extremes the explanation of dream-life is still unsteadily
vacillating. |
