CHAPTER ONE (CONTINUED...)
A. The Relation of the Dream to the Waking State
The naive judgment of the dreamer on waking assumes
that the dream- even if it does not come from another world- has at all
events transported the dreamer into another world. The old physiologist,
Burdach, to whom we are indebted for a careful and discriminating
description of the phenomena of dreams, expressed this conviction in a
frequently quoted passage (p. 474): "The waking life, with its trials and
joys, its pleasures and pains, is never repeated; on the contrary, the
dream aims at relieving us of these. Even when our whole mind is filled
with one subject, when our hearts are rent by bitter grief, or when some
task has been taxing our mental capacity to the utmost, the dream either
gives us something entirely alien, or it selects for its combinations only
a few elements of reality; or it merely enters into the key of our mood,
and symbolizes reality." J. H. Fichte (I. 541) speaks in precisely the
same sense of supplementary dreams, calling them one of the secret,
self-healing benefits of the psyche. L. Strumpell expresses himself to the
same effect in his Natur und Entstehung der Traume, a study which is
deservedly held in high esteem. "He who dreams turns his back upon the
world of waking consciousness" (p. 16); "In the dream the memory of the
orderly content of waking consciousness and its normal behaviour is almost
entirely lost" (p. 17); "The almost complete and unencumbered isolation of
the psyche in the dream from the regular normal content and course of the
waking state..." (p. 19).
Yet the overwhelming majority of writers on the subject
have adopted the contrary view of the relation of the dream to waking
life. Thus Haffner (p. 19): "To begin with, the dream continues the waking
life. Our dreams always connect themselves with such ideas as have shortly
before been present in our consciousness. Careful examination will nearly
always detect a thread by which the dream has linked itself to the
experiences of the previous day." Weygandt (p. 6) flatly contradicts the
statement of Burdach. "For it may often be observed, apparently indeed in
the great majority of dreams, that they lead us directly back into
everyday life, instead of releasing us from it." Maury (p. 56) expresses
the same idea in a concise formula: "Nous revons de ce que nous avons vu,
dit, desire, ou fait." * Jessen, in his Psychologie, published in 1855 (p.
530), is rather more explicit: "The content of dreams is always more or
less determined by the personality, the age, sex, station in life,
education and habits, and by the events and experiences of the whole past
life of the individual."
* We dream of what we have seen, said, desired, or
done.
The philosopher, I. G. E. Maas, adopts the most
unequivocal attitude in respect of this question (Uber die Leidenschaften,
1805): "Experience corroborates our assertion that we dream most
frequently of those things toward which our warmest passions are directed.
This shows us that our passions must influence the generation of our
dreams. The ambitious man dreams of the laurels which he has won (perhaps
only in imagination), or has still to win, while the lover occupies
himself, in his dreams, with the object of his dearest hopes.... All the
sensual desires and loathings which slumber in the heart, if they are
stimulated by any cause, may combine with other ideas and give rise to a
dream; or these ideas may mingle in an already existing dream." *
* Communicated by Winterstein to the Zentralblatt fur
Psychoanalyse.
The ancients entertained the same idea concerning the
dependence of the dream-content on life. I will quote Radestock (p. 139):
"When Xerxes, before his expedition against Greece, was dissuaded from his
resolution by good counsel, but was again and again incited by dreams to
undertake it, one of the old, rational dream-interpreters of the Persians,
Artabanus, told him, and very appropriately, that dream-images for the
most part contain that of which one has been thinking in the waking
state."
In the didactic poem of Lucretius, On the Nature of
Things (IV. 962), there occurs this passage:
"Et quo quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret, aut
quibus in rebus multum sumus ante morati atque in ea ratione fuit contenta
magis mens, in somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire; causidici causas
agere et componere leges, induperatores pugnare ac proelia obire,"...
etc., etc. * Cicero (De Divinatione, II. LXVII) says, in a similar strain,
as does also Maury many centuries later: "Maximeque 'reliquiae' rerum
earum moventur in animis et agitantur, de quibus vigilantes aut
cogitavimus aut egimus." *(2)
* And whatever be the pursuit to which one clings with
devotion, whatever the things on which we have been occupied much in the
past, the mind being thus more intent upon that pursuit, it is generally
the same things that we seem to encounter in dreams; pleaders to plead
their cause and collate laws, generals to contend and engage battle.
*(2) And especially the "remnant" of our waking
thoughts and deeds move and stir within the soul.
The contradiction between these two views concerning
the relation between dream life and waking life seems indeed irresolvable.
Here we may usefully cite the opinion of F. W. Hildebrandt (1875), who
held that on the whole the peculiarities of the dream can only be
described as "a series of contrasts which apparently amount to
contradictions" (p. 8). "The first of these contrasts is formed by the
strict isolation or seclusion of the dream from true and actual life on
the one hand, and on the other hand by the continuous encroachment of the
one upon the other, and the constant dependence of the one upon the other.
The dream is something absolutely divorced from the reality experienced
during the waking state; one may call it an existence hermetically sealed
up and insulated from real life by an unbridgeable chasm. It frees us from
reality, blots out the normal recollection of reality, and sets us in
another world and a totally different life, which fundamentally has
nothing in common with real life...." Hildebrandt then asserts that in
falling asleep our whole being, with its forms of existence, disappears
"as through an invisible trapdoor." In one's dream one is perhaps making a
voyage to St. Helena in order to offer the imprisoned Napoleon an
exquisite vintage of Moselle. One is most affably received by the
ex-emperor, and one feels almost sorry when, on waking, the interesting
illusion is destroyed. But let us now compare the situation existing in
the dream with the actual reality. The dreamer has never been a
wine-merchant, and has no desire to become one. He has never made a
sea-voyage, and St. Helena is the last place in the world that he would
choose as the destination of such a voyage. The dreamer feels no sympathy
for Napoleon, but on the contrary a strong patriotic aversion. And lastly,
the dreamer was not yet among the living when Napoleon died on the island
of St. Helena; so that it was beyond the realms of possibility that he
should have had any personal relations with Napoleon. The dream-
experience thus appears as something entirely foreign, interpolated
between two mutually related and successive periods of time.
"Nevertheless," continues Hildebrandt, "the apparent
contrary is just as true and correct. I believe that side by side with
this seclusion and insulation there may still exist the most intimate
interrelation. We may therefore justly say: Whatever the dream may offer
us, it derives its material from reality, and from the psychic life
centered upon this reality. However extraordinary the dream may seem, it
can never detach itself from the real world, and its most sublime as well
as its most ridiculous constructions must always borrow their elementary
material either from that which our eyes have beheld in the outer world,
or from that which has already found a place somewhere in our waking
thoughts; in other words, it must be taken from that which we have already
experienced, either objectively or subjectively." |
