Freud - Complete Works (93 page)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

559

   Dreams, then, think predominantly
in visual images - but not exclusively. They make use of auditory
images as well, and, to a lesser extent, of impressions belonging
to the other senses. Many things, too, occur in dreams (just as
they normally do in waking life) simply as thoughts or ideas -
probably, that is to say, in the form of residues of verbal
presentations. Nevertheless, what are truly characteristic of
dreams are only those elements of their content which behave like
images, which are more like perceptions, that is, than they are
like mnemic presentations. Leaving on one side all the arguments,
so familiar to psychiatrists, on the nature of hallucinations, we
shall be in agreement with every authority on the subject in
asserting that dreams
hallucinate
- that they replace
thoughts by hallucinations. In this respect there is no distinction
between visual and acoustic presentations: it has been observed
that if one falls asleep with the memory of a series of musical
notes in one’s mind, the memory becomes transformed into an
hallucination of the same melody; while, if one then wakes up again
- and the two states may alternate more than once during the
process of dropping asleep - the hallucination gives way in turn to
the mnemic presentation, which is at once fainter and qualitatively
different from it.

   The transformation of ideas into
hallucinations is not the only respect in which dreams differ from
corresponding thoughts in waking life. Dreams construct a
situation
out of these images; they represent an event which
is actually happening; as Spitta (1882, 145) puts it, they
‘dramatize’ an idea. But this feature of dream-life can
only be fully understood if we further recognize that in dreams -
as a rule, for there are exceptions which require special
examination - we appear not to
think
but to
experience
; that is to say, we attach complete belief to the
hallucinations. Not until we wake up does the critical comment
arise that we have not experienced anything but have merely been
thinking in a peculiar way, or in other words dreaming. It is this
characteristic that distinguishes true dreams from day-dreaming,
which is never confused with reality.

   Burdach (1838, 502 f.) summarizes
the features of dream-life which we have so far discussed in the
following words: ‘These are among the essential features of
dreams: (
a
) In dreams the subjective activity of our minds
appears in an objective form, for our perceptive faculties regard
the products of our imagination as though they were sense
impressions . . . (
b
) Sleep signifies an end
of the authority of the self. Hence falling asleep brings a certain
degree of passivity along with it. . . . The images
that accompany sleep can occur only on condition that the authority
of the self is reduced.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

560

   The next thing is to try to
explain the belief which the mind accords to dream-hallucinations,
a belief which can only arise after some kind of
‘authoritative’ activity of the self has ceased.
Strümpell (1877) argues that in this respect the mind is
carrying out its function correctly and in conformity with its own
mechanism. Far from being mere presentations, the elements of
dreams are true and real mental experiences of the same kind as
arise in a waking state through the agency of the senses. (Ibid.,
34.) The waking mind produces ideas and thoughts in verbal images
and in speech; but in dreams it does so in true sensory images.
(Ibid., 35.) Moreover, there is a spatial consciousness in dreams,
since sensations and images are assigned to an external space, just
as they are in waking. (Ibid., 36.) It must therefore be allowed
that in dreams the mind is in the same relation to its images and
perceptions as it is in waking. (Ibid., 43.) If it is nevertheless
in error in so doing, that is because in the state of sleep it
lacks the criterion which alone makes it possible to distinguish
between sense-perceptions arising from without and from within. It
is unable to submit its dream-images to the only tests which could
prove their objective reality, In addition to this, it disregards
the distinction between images which are only interchangeable
arbitrarily
and cases where the element of arbitrariness is
absent. It is in error because it is unable to apply the law of
causality to the content of its dreams. (Ibid., 50-1.)  In
short, the fact of its having turned away from the external world
is also the reason for its belief in the subjective world of
dreams.

   Delboeuf (1885, 84) arrives at
the same conclusion after somewhat different psychological
arguments. We believe in the reality of dream-images, he says,
because in our sleep we have no other impressions with which to
compare them, because we are detached from the external world. But
the reason why we believe in the truth of these hallucinations is
not because it is impossible to put them to the test
within
the dream. A dream can seem to offer us such tests: it can let us
touch the rose that we see - and yet we are dreaming. In
Delboeuf’s opinion there is only one valid criterion of
whether we are dreaming or awake, and that is the purely empirical
one of the fact of waking up. I conclude that everything I
experienced between falling asleep and waking up was illusory,
when, on awaking, I find that I am lying undressed in bed. During
sleep I took the dream images as real owing to my mental habit
(which cannot be put to sleep) of assuming the existence of an
external world with which I contrast my own ego.¹

  
¹
Haffner (1887, 243) attempts, like
Delboeuf, to explain the activity of dreaming by the modification
which the introduction of an abnormal condition must inevitably
produce in the otherwise correct functioning of an intact mental
apparatus; but he gives a somewhat different account of that
condition. According to him the first mark of a dream is its
independence of space and time, i. e. the fact of a presentation
being emancipated from the position occupied by the subject in the
spatial and temporal order of events. The second basic feature of
dreams is connected with this - namely, the fact that
hallucinations, phantasies and imaginary combinations are confused
with external perceptions. ‘All the higher powers of the mind
- in particular the formation of concepts and the powers of
judgement and inference on the one hand and free self-determination
on the other hand - are attached to sensory images and have at all
times a background of such images. It follows, therefore, that
these higher activities too take their part in the disorderliness
of the dream-images. I say "take their part", since in
them selves our powers of judgement and of will are in no way
altered in sleep. Our activities are just as clear-sighted and just
as free as in waking life. Even in his dreams a man cannot violate
the laws of thought as such - he cannot, for instance, regard as
identical things that appear to him as contraries, and so on. So
too in dreams he can only desire what he looks upon as a good
(
sub ratione boni
). But the human spirit is led astray in
dreams in its
application
of the laws of thought and of will
through confusing one idea with another. Thus it comes about that
we are guilty of the grossest contradictions in dreams, while at
the same time we can make the clearest judgements, draw the most
logical inferences and come to the most virtuous and saintly
decisions. . . . Lack of orientation is the whole
secret of the flights taken by our imagination in dreams, and lack
of critical reflection and of communication with other people is
the main source of the unbridled extravagance exhibited in dreams
by our judgements as well as by our hopes and wishes.’
(Ibid., 18.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

561

   Detachment from the external
world seems thus to be regarded as the factor determining the most
marked features of dream-life. It is therefore worth while quoting
some penetrating remarks made long ago by Burdach which throw light
on the relations between the sleeping mind and the external world
and which are calculated to prevent our setting too great store by
the conclusions drawn in the last few pages. ‘Sleep’,
he writes, ‘can occur only on condition that the mind is not
irritated by sensory stimuli. . . . But the actual
‘recondition of sleep is not so much absence of sensory
stimuli as absence of interest in them.¹ Some sense
impressions may actually be necessary in order to calm the mind.
Thus the miller can only sleep so long as he hears the clacking of
his mill; and anyone who feels that burning a night-light is a
necessary precaution, finds it impossible to get to sleep in the
dark.’ (Burdach, 1838, 482.)

   ‘In sleep the mind isolates
itself from the external world and withdraws from its own
periphery. . . . Nevertheless connection is not
broken off entirely. If we could not hear or feel while we were
actually asleep, but only after we had woken up, it would be
impossible to wake us at all. . . . The persistence
of sensation is proved even more clearly by the fact that what
rouses us is not always the mere sensory strength of an impression
but its psychical context: a sleeping man is not aroused by an
indifferent word, but if he is called by name he
wakes. . . . Thus the mind in sleep distinguishes
between sensations. . . . It is for that reason that
the absence of a sensory stimulus can wake a man if it is related
to something of ideational importance to him; so it is that the man
with the night-light wakes if it is extinguished and the miller is
roused if his mill comes to a stop. He is awakened, that is, by the
cessation of a sensory activity; and this implies that that
activity was perceived by him, but, since it was indifferent, or
rather satisfying, did not disturb his mind.’ (Ibid.,
485-6.)

   Even if we disregard these
objections - and they are by no means trifling ones -, we shall
have to confess that the features of dream-life which we have
considered hitherto, and which have been ascribed to its detachment
from the external world, do not account completely for its strange
character. For it should be possible otherwise to turn the
hallucinations in a dream back into ideas, and its situations into
thoughts, and in that way to solve the problem of
dream-interpretation. And that in fact is what we are doing when,
after waking, we reproduce a dream from memory; but, whether we
succeed in making this re-translation wholly or only in part, the
dream remains no less enigmatic than before.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] Cf. the
‘
désintérêt
’ which
Claparède (1905, 306 f.) regards as the mechanism of falling
asleep.

The Interpretation Of Dreams

562

   And indeed all the authorities
unhesitatingly assume that yet other and more deep-going
modifications of the ideational material of waking life take place
in dreams. Strümpell (1877, 27-8) has endeavoured to put his
finger on one such modification in the following passage:
‘With the cessation of sensory functioning and of normal
vital consciousness, the mind loses the soil in which its feelings,
desires, interests and activities are rooted. The psychical states,
too - feelings, interests, judgements of value - which are linked
to mnemic images in waking life, are subjected
to . . . an obscuring pressure, as a result of which
their connection with those images is broken; perceptual images of
things, persons, places, events and actions in waking life are
reproduced separately in great numbers, but none of them carries
its
psychical value
along with it. That value is detached
from them and they thus float about in the mind at their own sweet
will. . . .’ According to Strümpell, the fact of images
being denuded of their psychical value (which in turn goes back to
detachment from the external world) plays a principal part in
creating the impression of strangeness which distinguishes dreams
from actual life in our memory.

   We have seen that falling asleep
at once involves the loss of one of our mental activities, namely
our power of giving intentional guidance to the sequence of our
ideas. We are now faced by the suggestion, which is in any case a
plausible one, that the effects of the state of sleep may extend
over
all
the faculties of the mind. Some of these seem to be
entirely suspended; but the question now arises whether the rest
continue to operate normally and whether under such conditions they
are
capable
of normal work. And here it may be asked whether
the distinguishing features of dreams cannot be explained by the
lowering of psychical efficiency in the sleeping state - a notion
which finds support in the impression made by dreams on our waking
judgement. Dreams are disconnected, they accept the most violent
contradictions without the least objection, they admit
impossibilities, they disregard knowledge which carries great
weight with us in the daytime, they reveal us as ethical and moral
imbeciles. Anyone who when he was awake behaved in the sort of way
that is shown in situations in dreams would be considered insane.
Anyone who when he was awake talked in the sort of way that people
talk in dreams or described the sort of thing that happens in
dreams would give us the impression of being muddle-headed or
feeble minded. It seems to be no more than putting the truth into
words when we express our very low opinion of mental activity in
dreams and assert that in dreams the higher intellectual faculties
in particular are suspended or at all events gravely impaired.