Freud - Complete Works (91 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

549

   Krauss, the psychiatrist, in an
investigation carried through with remarkable consistency, traces
the origin alike of dreams and of deliria and delusions to the same
factor, namely to organically determined sensations. It is scarcely
possible to think of any part of the organism which might not be
the starting-point of a dream or of a delusion. Organically
determined sensations ‘may be divided into two classes: (1)
those constituting the general mood (coenaesthesia) and (2) the
specific sensations immanent in the principal systems of the
vegetative organism. Of these latter five groups are to be
distinguished: (
a
) muscular, (
b
) respiratory,
(
c
) gastric, (
d
) sexual and (
e
) peripheral
sensations.’ Krauss supposes that the process by which
dream-images arise on the basis of somatic stimuli is as follows.
The sensation that has been aroused evokes a cognate image, in
accordance with some law of association. It combines with the image
into an organic structure, to which, however, consciousness reacts
abnormally. For it pays no attention to the
sensation
, but
directs the whole of it to the accompanying
images
- which
explains why the true facts were for so long misunderstood. Krauss
has a special term for describing this process: the
‘trans-substantiation’ of sensations into
dream-images.

   The influence of organic somatic
stimuli upon the formation of dreams is almost universally accepted
to-day; but the question of the laws that govern the relation
between them is answered in very various ways, and often by obscure
pronouncements. On the basis of the theory of somatic stimulation,
dream-interpretation is thus faced with the special problem of
tracing back the content of a dream to the organic stimuli which
caused it; and, if the rules for interpretation laid down by
Scherner (1861) are not accepted, one is often faced with the
awkward fact that the only thing that reveals the existence of the
organic stimulus is precisely the content of the dream itself.

   There is a fair amount of
agreement, however, over the interpretation of various forms of
dreams that are described as ‘typical’, because they
occur in large numbers of people and with very similar content.
Such are the familiar dreams of falling from a height, of teeth
falling out, of flying and of embarrassment at being naked or
insufficiently clad. This last dream is attributed simply to the
sleeper’s perceiving that he has thrown off his bedclothes in
his sleep and is lying exposed to the air. The dream of teeth
falling out is traced back to a ‘dental stimulus’,
though this does not necessarily imply that the excitation of the
teeth is a pathological one. According to Strümpell the flying
dream is the image which is found appropriate by the mind as an
interpretation of the stimulus produced by the rising and sinking
of the lobes of the lungs at times when cutaneous sensations in the
thorax have ceased to be conscious: it is this latter circumstance
that leads to the feeling which is attached to the idea of
floating. The dream of falling from a height is said to be due to
an arm falling away from the body or a flexed knee being suddenly
extended at a time when the sense of cutaneous pressure is
beginning to be no longer conscious; the movements in question
cause the tactile sensations to become conscious once more, and the
transition to consciousness is represented psychically by the dream
of falling (ibid., 118). The obvious weakness of these attempted
explanations, plausible though they are, lies in the fact that,
without any other evidence, they can make successive hypotheses
that this or that group of organic sensations enters or disappears
from mental perception, till a constellation has been reached which
affords an explanation of the dream. I shall later have occasion to
return to the question of typical dreams and their origin.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

550

   Simon (1888, 34 f.) has attempted
to deduce some of the rules governing the way in which organic
stimuli determine the resultant dreams by comparing a series of
similar dreams. He asserts that if an organic apparatus which
normally plays a part in the expression of an emotion is brought by
some extraneous cause during sleep into the state of excitation
which is usually produced by the emotion, then a dream will arise
which will contain images appropriate to the emotion in question.
Another rule lays it down that if during sleep an organ is in a
state of activity, excitation or disturbance, the dream will
produce images related to the performance of the function which is
discharged by the organ concerned. Mourly Vold (1896) has set out
to prove experimentally in one particular field the effect on the
production of dreams which is asserted by the theory of somatic
stimulation. His experiment consisted in altering the position of a
sleeper’s limbs and comparing the resultant dreams with the
alterations made. He states his findings as follows:

    (1) The position of a limb
in the dream corresponds approximately to its position in reality.
Thus, we dream of the limb being in a static condition when it is
so actually.

    (2) If we dream of a limb
moving, then one of the positions passed through in the course of
completing the movement in variably corresponds to the limb’s
actual position.

    (3) The position of the
dreamer’s own limb may be ascribed in the dream to some other
person.

    (4) The dream may be of the
movement in question being
hindered
.

    (5) The limb which is in
the position in question may appear in the dream as an animal or
monster, in which case a certain analogy is established between
them.

    (6) The position of a limb
may give rise in the dream to thoughts which have some connection
with the limb. Thus, if the fingers are concerned, we dream of
numbers.

   I should be inclined to conclude
from findings such as these that even the theory of somatic
stimulation has not succeeded in completely doing away with the
apparent absence of determination in the choice of what
dream-images are to be produced.¹

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] This author
has since produced a two-volume report on his experiments (1910 and
1912), which is referred to below.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

551

4.  PSYCHICAL SOURCES OF
STIMULATION

   When we were dealing with the
relations of dreams to waking life and with the material of dreams,
we found that the most ancient and the most recent students of
dreams were united in believing that men dream of what they do
during the daytime and of what interests them while they are awake.
Such an interest, carried over from waking life into sleep, would
not only be a mental bond, a link between dreams and life, but
would also provide us with a further source of dreams and one not
to be despised. Indeed, taken in conjunction with the interests
that develop during sleep - the stimuli that impinge on the sleeper
- it might be enough to explain the origin of all dream-images. But
we have also heard the opposite asserted, namely that dreams
withdraw the sleeper from the interests of daytime and that, as a
rule, we only start dreaming of the things that have most struck us
during the day, after they have lost the spice of actuality in
waking life. Thus at every step we take in our analysis of
dream-life we come to feel that it is impossible to make
generalizations without covering ourselves by such qualifying
phrases as ‘frequently’, ‘as a rule’ or
‘in most cases’, and without being prepared to admit
the validity of exceptions.

   If it were a fact that waking
interests, along with internal and external stimuli during sleep,
sufficed to exhaust the aetiology of dreams, we ought to be in a
position to give a satisfactory account of the origin of every
element of a dream: the riddle of the sources of dreams would be
solved, and it would only remain to define the share taken
respectively by psychical and somatic stimuli in any particular
dream. Actually no such complete explanation of a dream has ever
yet been achieved, and anyone who has attempted it has found
portions (and usually very numerous portions) of the dream
regarding whose origin he could find nothing to say. Daytime
interests are clearly not such far-reaching psychical sources of
dreams as might have been expected from the categorical assertions
that everyone continues to carry on his daily business in his
dreams.

   No other psychical sources of
dreams are known. So it comes about that all the explanations of
dreams given in the literature of the subject - with the possible
exception of Scherner’s, which will be dealt with later -
leave a great gap when it comes to assigning an origin for the
ideational images which constitute the most characteristic material
of dreams. In this embarrassing situation, a majority of the
writers on the subject have tended to reduce to a minimum the part
played by psychical factors in instigating dreams, since those
factors are so hard to come at. It is true that they divide dreams
into two main classes - those ‘due to nervous
stimulation’ and those ‘due to association’, of
which the latter have their source exclusively in reproduction (cf.
Wundt, 1874, 657 f.). Nevertheless they cannot escape a doubt
‘whether any dream can take place without being given an
impetus by some somatic stimulus’ (Volkelt, 1875, 127). It is
difficult even to give a description of purely associative dreams.
‘In associative dreams proper, there can be no question of
any such solid core. Even the very centre of the dream is only
loosely put together. The ideational processes, which in any dream
are ungoverned by reason or common sense, are here no longer even
held together by my relatively important somatic or mental
excitations, and are thus abandoned to their own kaleidoscopic
changes and to their own jumbled confusion.’ (Ibid., 118.)
Wundt (1874, 656-7), too, seeks to minimize the psychical factor in
the instigation of dreams. He declares that there seems to be no
justification for regarding the phantasms of dreams as pure
hallucinations; most dream-images are probably in fact illusions,
since they arise from faint sense-impressions, which never cease
during sleep. Weygandt (1893, 17) has adopted this same view and
made its application general. He asserts of
all
dream-images
‘that their primary causes are sensory stimuli and that only
later do reproductive associations become attached to them’.
Tissié (1898, 183) goes even further in putting a limit to
the psychical sources of stimulation: ‘Les rêves
d’origine absolument psychique n’existent pas’;
and (ibid., 6) ‘les pensées de nos rêves nous
viennent du dehors. . . .’ ¹

  
¹
[‘Dreams of purely psychical origin
do not exist.’ ‘The thoughts in our dreams reach us
from outside.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

552

   Those writers who, like that
eminent philosopher Wundt, take up a middle position do not fail to
remark that in most dreams somatic stimuli and the psychical
instigators (whether unknown or recognized as daytime interests)
work in co-operation.

   We shall find later that the
enigma of the formation of dreams can be solved by the revelation
of an unsuspected psychical source of stimulation. Meanwhile we
shall feel no surprise at the over-estimation of the part played in
forming dreams by stimuli which do not arise from mental life. Not
only are they easy to discover and even open to experimental
confirmation; but the somatic view of the origin of dreams is
completely in line with the prevailing trend of thought in
psychiatry to-day. It is true that the dominance of the brain over
the organism is asserted with apparent confidence. Nevertheless,
anything that might indicate that mental life is in any way
independent of demonstrable organic changes or that its
manifestations are in any way spontaneous alarms the modern
psychiatrist, as though a recognition of such things would
inevitably bring back the days of the Philosophy of Nature, and of
the metaphysical view of the nature of mind. The suspicions of the
psychiatrists have put the mind, as it were, under tutelage, and
they now insist that none of its impulses shall be allowed to
suggest that it has any means of its own. This behaviour of theirs
only shows how little trust they really have in the validity of a
causal connection between the somatic and the mental. Even when
investigation shows that the primary exciting cause of a phenomenon
is psychical, deeper research will one day trace the path further
and discover an organic basis for the mental event. But if at the
moment we cannot see beyond the mental, that is no reason for
denying its existence.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

553

(D)

WHY DREAMS ARE FORGOTTEN AFTER
WAKING

   It is a proverbial fact that
dreams melt away in the morning. They can, of course, be
remembered; for we only know dreams from our memory of them after
we are awake. But we very often have a feeling that we have only
remembered a dream in part and that there was more of it during the
night; we can observe, too, how the recollection of a dream, which
was still lively in the morning, will melt away, except for a few
small fragments, in the course of the day; we often know we have
dreamt, without knowing
what
we have dreamt; and we are so
familiar with the fact of dreams being liable to be forgotten, that
we see no absurdity in the possibility of someone having had a
dream in the night and of his not being aware in the morning either
of what he has dreamt or even of the fact that he has dreamt at
all. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that dreams show an
extraordinary persistence in the memory. I have analysed dreams in
my patients which occurred twenty-five and more years earlier; and
I can remember a dream of my own separated by at least thirty-seven
years from to-day and yet as fresh as ever in my memory. All of
this is very remarkable and not immediately intelligible.