The Interpretation of Dreams

We have heard that even falling asleep carries with it the abandonment of one of the psychic activities—namely, the voluntary conduct of the presentation course. Thus the supposition, suggested also by other grounds, obtrudes itself, that the sleeping state may extend its influence also over the psychic functions. One or the other of these functions is perhaps entirely suspended; whether the remaining ones continue to work undisturbed, whether they can furnish normal work under the circumstances, is the next question. The idea occurs to us that the peculiarities of the dream may be explained through the inferior psychic activity during the sleeping state, but now comes the impression made by the dream upon our waking judgment which is contrary to such a conception. The dream is disconnected, it unites without hesitation the worst contradictions, it allows impossibilities, it disregards our authoritative knowledge from the day, and evinces ethical and moral dulness. He who would behave in the waking state as the dream does in its situations would be considered insane. He who in the waking state would speak in such manner or report such things as occur in the dream content, would impress us as confused and weak-minded. Thus we believe that we are only finding words for the fact when we place but little value 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, the incoherence of the dream picture is the only essential character of the dream. Maury agrees with him; he says (p. 163): “Il n’y a pas des rêves absolument raisonnables et qui ne contiennent quelque incohérence, quelque anachronisme, quelque absurdité.” According to Hegel, quoted by Spitta, the dream lacks all objective and comprehensible connection. Dugas says: “Le rêve, c’est l’anarchie psychique, affective et mentale, c’est le jeu des fonctions livrées à elles-mêmes 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 Volkelt (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.” Fechner 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.” Radestock (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.”

Hildebrandt (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.”

Binz (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.” Maury (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 chorée 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, 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, (p. 148) the presentations in the dream are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality. Radestock and others emphasize the weakness of judgment and decision in the dream. According to Jodl (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 Stricker (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, 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, 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).

Scholz (p. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the dream in the “allegorising interpretation” to which the dream material is subjected. Siebeck 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. Delbœuf 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. Strümpell (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, æsthetic 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. Wundt and Weygandt). 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 in the waking mental activity. Thus Volkelt says: “In the dream, the ideas chase and hunt each other on the strength of accidental similarities and barely perceptible connections. All dreams are pervaded by such loose and free associations.” Maury attaches great value to this characteristic of connection between presentations, which allows him to bring the dream life in closer analogy to certain mental disturbances. He recognises two main characters of the délire: “(1) une action spontanée et comme automatique de l’esprit; (2) une association vicieuse et irregulière des idées” (p. 126). Maury gives us two excellent examples from his own dreams, in which the mere similarity of sound forms the connection of the dream presentations. He dreamed once that he undertook a pilgrimage (pélerinage) to Jerusalem or Mecca. After many adventures he was with the chemist Pelletier; the latter after some talk gave him a zinc shovel (pelle) which became his long battle sword in the dream fragment which followed (p. 137). On another occasion he walked in a dream on the highway and read the kilometres on the milestones; presently he was with a spice merchant who had large scales with which to weigh Maury; the spice merchant then said to him: “You are not in Paris; but on the island Gilolo.” This was followed by many pictures, in which he saw the flower Lobelia, then the General Lopez, of whose demise he had read shortly before. He finally awoke while playing a game of lotto.

We are, however, quite prepared to hear that this depreciation of the psychic activities of the dream has not remained without contradiction from the other side. To be sure, contradiction seems difficult here. Nor is it of much significance that one of the depreciators of dream life, Spitta (p. 118), assures us that the same psychological laws which govern the waking state rule the dream also, or that another (Dugas) states: “Le rêve n’est pas déraison ni même irraison pure,” as long as neither of them has made any effort to bring this estimation into harmony with the psychic anarchy and dissolution of all functions in the dream described by them. Upon others, however, the possibility seems to have dawned that the madness of the dream is perhaps not without its method—that it is perhaps only a sham, like that of the Danish prince, to whose madness the intelligent judgment here cited refers. These authors must have refrained from judging by appearances, or the appearance which the dream showed to them was quite different.

Without wishing to linger at its apparent absurdity, Havelock Ellis considers the dream as “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” the study of which may make us acquainted with primitive stages of development of the psychic life. A thinker like Delbœuf asserts—to be sure without adducing proof against the contradictory material, and hence indeed unjustly: “Dans le sommeil, hormis la perception, toutes les facultés de l’esprit, intelligence, imagination, mémoire, volonté, moralité, restant intactes dans leur essence; seulement, elles s’appliquent à des objets imaginaires et mobiles. Le songeur est un acteur qui joue à volonté les fous et les sages, les bourreaux et les victimes, les nains et les géants, les démons et les anges” (p. 222). The Marquis of Hervey, who is sharply controverted by Maury, and whose work I could not obtain despite all effort, seems to combat most energetically the under-estimation of the psychic capacity in the dream. Maury speaks of him as follows (p. 19): “M. le Marquis d’Hervey prête à l’intelligence, durant le sommeil toute sa liberté d’action et d’attention et il ne semble faire consister le sommeil que dans l’occlusion des sens, dans leur fermeture au monde extérieur; en sorte que l’homme qui dort ne se distingué guère, selon sa manière de voir, de l’homme qui laisse vaguer sa pensée en se bouchant les sens; toute la différence qui séparé alors la pensée ordinaire du celle du dormeur c’est que, chez celui-ci, l’idée prend une forme visible, objective et ressemble, à s’y méprendre, à la sensation déterminée par les objets extérieurs; le souvenir revêt l’apparence du fait présent.”

Maury adds, however; “Qu’il y a une différence de plus et capitale à savoir que les facultés intellectuelles de l’homme endormi n’offrent pas l’équilibre qu’elles gardent chez l’homme l’éveillé.” The scale of the estimation of the dream as a psychic product has a great range in the literature; it reaches from the lowest under-estimation, the expression of which we have come to know, through the idea of a value not yet revealed to the over-estimation which places the dream far above the capacities of the waking life. Hildebrandt, who, as we know, sketches the psychological characteristics into three antinomies, sums up in the third of these contradistinctions the extreme points of this series as follows (p. 19): “It is between a climax, often an involution which raises itself to virtuosity, and on the other hand a decided diminution and weakening of the psychic life often leading below the human niveau.”

“As for the first, who could not confirm from his own experience that, in the creations and weavings of the genius of the dream, there sometimes comes to light a profundity and sincerity of emotion, a tenderness of feeling, a clearness of view, a fineness of observation, and a readiness of wit, all which we should modestly have to deny that we possess as a constant property during the waking life? The dream has a wonderful poetry, an excellent allegory, an incomparable humour, and a charming irony. It views the world under the guise of a peculiar idealisation, and often raises the effect of its manifestations into the most ingenious understanding of the essence lying at its basis. It represents for us earthly beauty in true heavenly radiance, the sublime in the highest majesty, the actually frightful in the most gruesome figure, and the ridiculous in the indescribably drastic comical; and at times we are so full of one of these impressions after awakening that we imagine that such a thing has never been offered to us by the real world.”

One may ask, is it really the same object that the depreciating remarks and these inspired praises are meant for? Have the latter overlooked the stupid dreams and the former the thoughtful and ingenious dreams? And if both kinds do occur—that is, dreams that merit to be judged in this or that manner—does it not seem idle to seek the psychological character of the dream? Would it not suffice to state that everything is possible in the dream, from the lowest depreciation of the psychic life to a raising of the same which is unusual in the waking state? As convenient as this solution would be it has this against it, that behind the efforts of all dream investigators, it seems to be presupposed that there is such a definable character of the dream, which is universally valid in its essential features and which must eliminate these contradictions.

It is unquestionable that the psychic capacities of the dream have found quicker and warmer recognition in that intellectual period which now lies behind us, when philosophy rather than exact natural science ruled intelligent minds. Utterances like those of Schubert, that the dream frees the mind from the power of outer nature, that it liberates the soul from the chains of the sensual, and similar opinions expressed by the younger Fichte,[M] and others, who represent the dream as a soaring up of the psychic life to a higher stage, hardly seem conceivable to us to-day; they are only repeated at present by mystics and devotees. With the advance of the scientific mode of thinking, a reaction took place in the estimation of the dream. It is really the medical authors who are most prone to underrate the psychic activity in the dream, as being insignificant and invaluable, whereas, philosophers and unprofessional observers—amateur psychologists—whose contributions in this realm can surely not be overlooked, in better agreement with the popular ideas, have mostly adhered to the psychic value of the dream. He who is inclined to underrate the psychic capacity in the dream prefers, as a matter of course, the somatic exciting sources in the etiology of the dream; he who leaves to the dreaming mind the greater part of its capacities, naturally has no reason for not also admitting independent stimuli for dreaming.

Among the superior activities which, even on sober comparison, one is tempted to ascribe to the dream life, memory is the most striking; we have fully discussed the frequent experiences which prove this fact. Another superiority of the dream life, frequently extolled by the old authors, viz. that it can regard itself supreme in reference to distance of time and space, can be readily recognised as an illusion. This superiority, as observed by Hildebrandt, is only illusional; the dream takes as much heed of time and space as the waking thought, and this because it is only a form of thinking. The dream is supposed to enjoy still another advantage in reference to time; that is, it is independent in still another sense of the passage of time. Dreams like the guillotine dream of Maury, reported above, seem to show that the dream can crowd together more perception content in a very short space of time than can be controlled by our psychic activity in the waking mind. These conclusions have been controverted, however, by many arguments; the essays of Le Lorrain and Egger “Concerning the apparent duration of dreams” gave rise to a long and interesting discussion which has probably not said the last word upon this delicate and far-reaching question.

That the dream has the ability to take up the intellectual work of the day and bring to a conclusion what has not been settled during the day, that it can solve doubt and problems, and that it may become the source of new inspiration in poets and composers, seems to be indisputable, as is shown by many reports and by the collection compiled by Chabaneix. But even if there be no dispute as to the facts, nevertheless their interpretation is open in principle to a great many doubts. Finally the asserted divinatory power of the dream forms an object of contention in which hard unsurmountable reflection encounters obstinate and continued faith. It is indeed just that we should refrain from denying all that is based on fact in this subject, as there is a possibility that a number of such cases may perhaps be explained on a natural psychological basis.

(f) The Ethical Feelings in the Dream.—For reasons which will be understood only after cognisance has been taken of my own investigations of the dream, I have separated from the psychology of the dream the partial problem whether and to what extent the moral dispositions and feelings of the waking life extend into the dreams. The same contradictions which we were surprised to observe in the authors’ descriptions of all the other psychic capacities strike us again here. Some affirm decidedly that the dream knows nothing of moral obligations; others as decidedly that the moral nature of man remains even in his dream life. A reference to our dream experience of every night seems to raise the correctness of the first assertion beyond doubt. Jessen says (p. 553): “Nor does one become better or more virtuous in the dream; on the contrary, it seems that conscience is silent in the dream, inasmuch as one feels no compassion and can commit the worst crimes, such as theft, murder, and assassination, with perfect indifference and without subsequent remorse.” Radestock (p. 146) says: “It is to be noticed that in the dream the associations terminate and the ideas unite without being influenced by reflection and reason, æsthetic taste, and moral judgment; the judgment is extremely weak, and ethical indifference reigns supreme.”

Volkelt (p. 23) expresses himself as follows: “As every one knows, the sexual relationship in the dream is especially unbridled. Just as the dreamer himself is shameless in the extreme, and wholly lacking moral feeling and judgment, so also he sees others, even the most honoured persons, engaged in actions which even in thought he would blush to associate with them in his waking state.” Utterances like those of Schopenhauer, that in the dream every person acts and talks in accordance with his character, form the sharpest contrast to those mentioned above. R. P. Fischer[N] maintains that the subjective feelings and desires or affects and passions manifest themselves in the wilfulness of the dream life, and that the moral characteristics of a person are mirrored in his dream. Haffner (p. 25): “With rare exceptions ... a virtuous person will be virtuous also in his dreams; he will resist temptation, and show no sympathy for hatred, envy, anger, and all other vices; while the sinful person will, as a rule, also find in his dreams the pictures which he has before him while awake.”

Scholz (p. 36): “In the dream there is truth; despite all masking in pride or humility, we still recognise our own self.... The honest man does not commit any dishonourable offence even in the dream, or, if this does occur, he is terrified over it as if over something foreign to his nature. The Roman emperor who ordered one of his subjects to be executed because he dreamed that he cut off the emperor’s head, was not wrong in justifying his action on the ground that he who has such dreams must have similar thoughts while awake. About a thing that can have no place in our mind we therefore say significantly: ‘I would never dream of such a thing.’” Pfaff,[O] varying a familiar proverb, says: “Tell me for a time your dreams, and I will tell you what you are within.” The short work of Hildebrandt, from which I have already taken so many quotations, a contribution to the dream problem as complete and as rich in thought as I found in the literature, places the problem of morality in the dream as the central point of its interest. For Hildebrandt, too, it is a strict rule that the purer the life, the purer the dream; the impurer the former, the impurer the latter.

The moral nature of man remains even in the dream: “But while we are not offended nor made suspicious by an arithmetical error no matter how obvious, by a reversal of science no matter how romantic, or by an anachronism no matter how witty, we nevertheless do not lose sight of the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice. No matter how much of what follows us during the day may vanish in our hours of sleep—Kant’s categorical imperative sticks to our heels as an inseparable companion from whom we cannot rid ourselves even in slumber.... This can be explained, however, only by the fact that the fundamental in human nature, the moral essence, is too firmly fixed to take part in the activity of the kaleidoscopic shaking up to which phantasy, reason, memory, and other faculties of the same rank succumb in the dream” (p. 45, &c.).

In the further discussion of the subject we find remarkable distortion and inconsequence in both groups of authors. Strictly speaking, interest in immoral dreams would cease for all those who assert that the moral personality of the person crumbles away in the dream. They could just as calmly reject the attempt to hold the dreamer responsible for his dreams, and to draw inferences from the badness of his dreams as to an evil strain in his nature, as they rejected the apparently similar attempt to demonstrate the insignificance of his intellectual life in the waking state from the absurdity of his dreams. The others for whom “the categorical imperative” extends also into the dream, would have to accept full responsibility for the immoral dreams; it would only be desirable for their own sake that their own objectionable dreams should not lead them to abandon the otherwise firmly held estimation of their own morality.

Still it seems that no one knows exactly about himself how good or how bad he is, and that no one can deny the recollection of his own immoral dreams. For besides the opposition already mentioned in the criticism of the morality of the dream, both groups of authors display an effort to explain the origin of the immoral dream and a new opposition is developed, depending on whether their origin is sought in the functions of the psychic life or in the somatically determined injuries to this life. The urgent force of the facts then permits the representatives of the responsibility, as well as of the irresponsibility of the dream life, to agree in the recognition of a special psychic source for the immorality of dreams.

All those who allow the continuance of the morality in the dream nevertheless guard against accepting full responsibility for their dreams. Haffner says (p. 24): “We are not responsible for dreams because the basis upon which alone our life has truth and reality is removed from our thoughts.... Hence there can be no dream wishing and dream acting, no virtue or sin.” Still the person is responsible for the sinful dream in so far as he brings it about indirectly. Just as in the waking state, it is his duty to cleanse his moral mind, particularly so before retiring to sleep. The analysis of this mixture of rejection and recognition of responsibility for the moral content of the dream is followed much further by Hildebrandt. After specifying that the dramatic manner of representation in the dream, the crowding together of the most complicated processes of deliberation in the briefest period of time, and the depreciation and the confusion of the presentation elements in the dream admitted by him must be recognised as unfavourable to the immoral aspect of dreams; he nevertheless confesses that, yielding to the most earnest reflection, he is inclined simply to deny all responsibility for faults and dream sins.

(P. 49): “If we wish to reject very decisively any unjust accusation, especially one that has reference to our intentions and convictions, we naturally make use of the expression: I should never have dreamed of such a thing. By this we mean to say, of course, that we consider the realm of the dream the last and remotest place in which we are to be held responsible for our thoughts, because there these thoughts are only loosely and incoherently connected with our real being, so that we should hardly still consider them as our own; but as we feel impelled expressly to deny the existence of such thoughts, even in this realm, we thus at the same time indirectly admit that our justification will not be complete if it does not reach to that point. And I believe that, though unconsciously, we here speak the language of truth.”

(P. 52): “No dream thought can be imagined whose first motive has not already moved through the mind while awake as some wish, desire, or impulse.” Concerning this original impulse we must say that the dream has not discovered it—it has only imitated and extended it, it has only elaborated a bit of historical material which it has found in us, into dramatic form; it enacts the words of the apostle: He who hates his brother is a murderer. And whereas, after we awaken and become conscious of our moral strength, we may smile at the boldly executed structure of the depraved dream, the original formative material, nevertheless, has no ridiculous side. One feels responsible for the transgressions of the dreamer, not for the whole sum, but still for a certain percentage. “In this sense, which is difficult to impugn, we understand the words of Christ: Out of the heart come evil thoughts—for we can hardly help being convinced that every sin committed in the dream brings with it at least a vague minimum of guilt.”

Hildebrandt thus finds the source of the immorality of dreams in the germs and indications of evil impulses which pass through our minds during the day as tempting thoughts, and he sees fit to add these immoral elements to the moral estimation of the personality. It is the same thoughts and the same estimation of these thoughts, which, as we know, have caused devout and holy men of all times to lament that they are evil sinners. There is certainly no reason to doubt the general occurrence of these contrasting presentations—in most men and even also in other than ethical spheres. The judgment of these at times has not been very earnest. In Spitta we find the following relevant expression from A. Zeller (Article “Irre” in the Allgemeinen Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften of Ersch and Grüber, p. 144): “The mind is rarely so happily organised as to possess at all times power enough not to be disturbed, not only by unessential but also by perfectly ridiculous ideas running counter to the usual clear trend of thought; indeed, the greatest thinkers have had cause to complain of this dreamlike disturbing and painful rabble of ideas, as it destroys their profoundest reflection and their most sacred and earnest mental work.”

A clearer light is thrown on the psychological status of this idea of contrast by another observation of Hildebrandt, that the dream at times allows us to glance into the deep and inmost recesses of our being, which are generally closed to us in our waking state (p. 55). The same knowledge is revealed by Kant in his Anthropology, when he states that the dream exists in order to lay bare for us our hidden dispositions and to reveal to us not what we are, but what we might have been if we had a different education. Radestock (p. 84) says that the dream often only reveals to us what we do not wish to admit to ourselves, and that we therefore unjustly condemn it as a liar and deceiver. That the appearance of impulses which are foreign to our consciousness is merely analogous to the already familiar disposition which the dream makes of other material of the presentation, which is either absent or plays only an insignificant part in the waking state, has been called to our attention by observations like those of Benini, who says: “Certe nostre inclinazione che si credevano soffocate a spente da un pezzo, si ridestano; passioni vecchie e sepolte rivivono; cose e persone a cui non pensiamo mai, ci vengono dinanzi” (p. 149). Volkelt expresses himself in a similar way: “Even presentations which have entered into our consciousness almost unnoticed, and have never perhaps been brought out from oblivion, often announce through the dream their presence in the mind” (p. 105). Finally, it is not out of place to mention here that, according to Schleiermacher, the state of falling asleep is accompanied by the appearance of undesirable presentations (pictures).

We may comprise under “undesirable presentations” this entire material of presentations, the occurrence of which excites our wonder in immoral as well as in absurd dreams. The only important difference consists in the fact that our undesirable presentations in the moral sphere exhibit an opposition to our other feelings, whereas the others simply appear strange to us. Nothing has been done so far to enable us to remove this difference through a more penetrating knowledge.

But what is the significance of the appearance of undesirable presentations in the dream? What inferences may be drawn for the psychology of the waking and dreaming mind from these nocturnal manifestations of contrasting ethical impulses? We may here note a new diversity of opinion, and once more a different grouping of the authors. The stream of thought followed by Hildebrandt, and by others who represent his fundamental view, cannot be continued in any other way than by ascribing to the immoral impulses a certain force even in the waking state, which, to be sure, is inhibited from advancing to action, and asserting that something falls off during sleep, which, having the effect of an inhibition, has kept us from noticing the existence of such an impulse. The dream thus shows the real, if not the entire nature of man, and is a means of making the hidden psychic life accessible to our understanding. It is only on such assumption that Hildebrandt can attribute to the dream the rôle of monitor who calls our attention to the moral ravages in the soul, just as in the opinion of physicians it can announce a hitherto unobserved physical ailment. Spitta, too, cannot be guided by any other conception when he refers to the stream of excitement which, e.g., flows in upon the psyche during puberty, and consoles the dreamer by saying that he has done everything in his power when he has led a strictly virtuous life during his waking state, when he has made an effort to suppress the sinful thoughts as often as they arise, and has kept them from maturing and becoming actions. According to this conception, we might designate the “undesirable” presentations as those that are “suppressed” during the day, and must recognise in their appearance a real psychic phenomenon.

If we followed other authors we would have no right to the last inference. For Jessen the undesirable presentations in the dream as in the waking state, in fever and other deliria, merely have “the character of a voluntary activity put to rest and a somewhat mechanical process of pictures and presentations produced by inner impulses” (p. 360). An immoral dream proves nothing for the psychic life of the dreamer except that he has in some way become cognizant of the ideas in question; it is surely not a psychic impulse of his own. Another author, Maury, makes us question whether he, too, does not attribute to the dream state the capacity for dividing the psychic activity into its components instead of destroying it aimlessly. He speaks as follows about dreams in which one goes beyond the bounds of morality: “Ce sont nos penchants qui parlent et qui nous font agir, sans que la conscience nous retienne, bien que parfois elle nous avertisse. J’ai mes défauts et mes penchants vicieux; à l’état de veille, je tache de lutter contre eux, et il m’arrive assez souvent de n’y pas succomber. Mais dans mes songes j’y succombe toujours ou pour mieux dire j’agis, par leur impulsion, sans crainte et sans remords.... Évidemment les visions qui se déroulent devant ma pensée et qui constituent le rêve, me sont suggérées par les incitations que je ressens et que ma volonté absente ne cherche pas à refouler” (p. 113).

If one believes in the capacity of the dream to reveal an actually existing but repressed or concealed immoral disposition of the dreamer, he could not emphasize his opinion more strongly than with the words of Maury (p. 115): “En rêve l’homme se révèle donc tout entier à soi-même dans sa nudité et sa misère natives. Dès qu’il suspend l’exercice de sa volonté, il dévient le jouet de toutes les passions contre lesquelles, à l’état de veille, la conscience, le sentiment d’honneur, la crainte nous défendent.” In another place he finds the following striking words (p. 462): “Dans le rêve, c’est surtout l’homme instinctif que se révèle.... L’homme revient pour ainsi dire à l’état de nature quand il rêve; mais moins les idées acquises ont pénétré dans son esprit, plus les penchants en désaccord avec elles conservent encore sur lui d’influence dans le rêve.” He then mentions as an example that his dreams often show him as a victim of just those superstitions which he most violently combats in his writing.

The value of all these ingenious observations for a psychological knowledge of the dream life, however, is marred by Maury through the fact that he refuses to recognise in the phenomena so correctly observed by him any proof of the “automatisme psychologique” which in his opinion dominates the dream life. He conceives this automatism as a perfect contrast to the psychic activity. A passage in the studies on consciousness by Stricker reads: “The dream does not consist of delusions merely; if, e.g., one is afraid of robbers in the dream, the robbers are, of course, imaginary, but the fear is real. One’s attention is thus called to the fact that the effective development in the dream does not admit of the judgment which one bestows upon the rest of the dream content, and the problem arises what part of the psychic processes in the dream may be real, i.e. what part of them may demand to be enrolled among the psychic processes of the waking state?”

(g) Dream Theories and Functions of the Dream.—A statement concerning the dream which as far as possible attempts to explain from one point of view many of its noted characters, and which at the same time determines the relation of the dream to a more comprehensive sphere of manifestations, may be called a theory of dreams. Individual theories of the dream will be distinguished from one another through the fact that they raise to prominence this or that characteristic of the dream, and connect explanations and relations with it. It will not be absolutely necessary to derive from the theory a function, i.e. a use or any such activity of the dream, but our expectation, which is usually adjusted to teleology, will nevertheless welcome those theories which promise an understanding of the function of the dream.

We have already become acquainted with many conceptions of the dream which, more or less, merit the name of dream theories in this sense. The belief of the ancients that the dream was sent by the gods in order to guide the actions of man was a complete theory of the dream giving information concerning everything in the dream worth knowing. Since the dream has become an object of biological investigation we have a greater number of theories, of which, however, some are very incomplete. If we waive completeness, we may attempt the following loose grouping of dream theories based on their fundamental conception of the degree and mode of the psychic activity in the dream:—

1. Theories, like those of Delbœuf, which allow the full psychic activity of the waking state to continue into the dream. Here the mind does not sleep; its apparatus remains intact, and, being placed under the conditions different from the waking state, it must in normal activity furnish results different from those of the waking state. In these theories it is a question whether they are in position to derive the distinctions between dreaming and waking thought altogether from the determinations of the sleeping state. They moreover lack a possible access to a function of the dream; one cannot understand why one dreams, why the complicated mechanism of the psychic apparatus continues to play even when it is placed under conditions for which it is not apparently adapted. There remain only two expedient reactions—to sleep dreamlessly or to awake when approached by disturbing stimuli—instead of the third, that of dreaming.

2. Theories which, on the contrary, assume for the dream a diminution for the psychic activity, a loosening of the connections, and an impoverishment in available material. In accordance with these theories, one must assume for sleep a psychological character entirely different from the one given by Delbœuf. Sleep extends far beyond the mind—it does not consist merely in a shutting off of the mind from the outer world; on the contrary, it penetrates into its mechanism, causing it at times to become useless. If I may draw a comparison from psychiatrical material, I may say that the first theories construct the dream like a paranoia, while the second make it after the model of a dementia or an amentia.

The theory that only a fragment of the psychic activity paralysed by sleep comes to expression is by far the favourite among the medical writers and in the scientific world. As far as one may presuppose a more general interest in dream interpretation, it may well be designated as the ruling theory of the dream. It is to be emphasized with what facility this particular theory escapes the worst rock threatening every dream interpretation, that is to say, being shipwrecked upon one of the contrasts embodied in the dream. As this theory considers the dream the result of a partial waking (or as Herbart’s Psychology of the dream says, “a gradual, partial, and at the same time very anomalous waking”), it succeeds in covering the entire series of inferior activities in the dream which reveal themselves in its absurdities, up to the full concentration of mental activity, by following a series of states which become more and more awake until they reach full awakening. One who finds the psychological mode of expression indispensable, or who thinks more scientifically, will find this theory of the dream expressed in the discussion of Binz (p. 43):—

“This state [of numbness], however, gradually approaches its end in the early morning hours. The accumulated material of fatigue in the albumen of the brain gradually becomes less. It is gradually decomposed or carried away by the constantly flowing circulation. Here and there some masses of cells can be distinguished as awake, while all around everything still remains in a state of torpidity. The isolated work of the individual groups now appears before our clouded consciousness, which lacks the control of other parts of the brain governing the associations. Hence the pictures created, which mostly correspond to the objective impressions of the recent past, fit with each other in a wild and irregular manner. The number of the brain cells set free becomes constantly greater, the irrationality of the dream constantly less.”

The conception of the dream as an incomplete, partial waking state, or traces of its influence, can surely be found among all modern physiologists and philosophers. It is most completely represented by Maury. It often seems as if this author represented to himself the state of being awake or asleep in anatomical regions; at any rate it appears to him that an anatomical province is connected with a definite psychic function. I may here merely mention that if the theory of partial waking could be confirmed, there would remain much to be accomplished in its elaboration. Naturally a function of the dream cannot be found in this conception of the dream life. On the contrary, the criticism of the status and importance of the dream is consistently uttered in this statement of Binz (p. 357): “All the facts, as we see, urge us to characterise the dream as a physical process in all cases useless, in many cases even morbid.”

The expression “physical” in reference to the dream, which owes its prominence to this author, points in more than one direction. In the first place, it refers to the etiology of the dream, which was especially clear to Binz, as he studied the experimental production of dreams by the administration of poisons. It is certainly in keeping with this kind of dream theory to ascribe the incitement of the dream exclusively to somatic origin whenever possible. Presented in the most extreme form, it reads as follows: After we have put ourselves to sleep by removing the stimuli, there would be no need and no occasion for dreaming until morning, when the gradual awakening through the incoming stimuli would be reflected in the phenomenon of dreaming. But as a matter of fact, it is not possible to keep sleep free from stimuli; just as Mephisto complains about the germs of life, so stimuli reach the sleeper from every side—from without, from within, and even from certain bodily regions which never give us any concern during the waking state. Thus sleep is disturbed; the mind is aroused, now by this, now by that little thing, and functionates for a while with the awakened part only to be glad to fall asleep again. The dream is a reaction to the stimulus causing a disturbance of sleep—to be sure, it is a purely superfluous reaction.

To designate the dream as a physical process, which for all that remains an activity of the mental organ, has still another sense. It is meant to dispute the dignity of a psychic process for the dream. The application to the dream of the very old comparison of the “ten fingers of a musically ignorant person running over the keyboard of an instrument,” perhaps best illustrates in what estimation the dream activity has been held by the representatives of exact science. In this sense it becomes something entirely untranslatable, for how could the ten fingers of an unmusical player produce any music? The theory of partial wakefulness has not passed without objection even in early times. Thus Burdach, in 1830, says: “If we say that the dream is a partial wakefulness, in the first place, we explain thereby neither the waking nor the sleeping state; secondly, this expresses nothing more than that certain forces of the mind are active in the dream while others are at rest. But such irregularities take place throughout life....” (p. 483).

Among extant dream theories which consider the dream a “physical” process, there is one very interesting conception of the dream, first propounded by Robert in 1866, which is attractive because it assigns to the dream a function or a useful end. As a basis for this theory, Robert takes from observation two facts which we have already discussed in our consideration of the dream material (see p. 13). These facts are: that one very often dreams about the insignificant impressions of the day, and that one rarely carries over into the dream the absorbing interests of the day. Robert asserts as exclusively correct, that things which have been fully settled never become dream inciters, but only such things as are incomplete in the mind or touch it fleetingly (p. 11). “We cannot usually explain our dreams because their causes are to be found in sensory impressions of the preceding day which have not attained sufficient recognition by the dreamer.” The conditions allowing an impression to reach the dream are therefore, either that this impression has been disturbed in its elaboration, or that being too insignificant it has no claim to such elaboration.

Robert therefore conceives the dream “as a physical process of elimination which has reached to cognition in the psychic manifestation of its reaction.” Dreams are eliminations of thoughts nipped in the bud. “A man deprived of the capacity for dreaming would surely 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 there would be crushed all that should be incorporated as a finished whole into memory.” The dream acts as a safety-valve for the overburdened brain. Dreams possess healing and unburdening properties (p. 32).

It would be a mistake to ask Robert how representation in the dream can bring about an unburdening of the mind. The author apparently concluded from those two peculiarities of the dream material that during sleep such ejection of worthless impressions is effected as a somatic process, and that dreaming is not a special psychic process but only the knowledge that we receive of such elimination. To be sure an elimination is not the only thing that takes place in the mind during sleep. Robert himself adds that the incitements of the day are also elaborated, and “what cannot be eliminated from the undigested thought material lying in the mind becomes connected by threads of thought borrowed from the phantasy into a finished whole, and thus enrolled in the memory as a harmless phantasy picture” (p. 23).

But it is in his criticism of the dream sources that Robert appears most bluntly opposed to the ruling theory. Whereas according to the existing theory there would be no dream if the outer and inner sensory stimuli did not repeatedly wake the mind, according to Robert the impulse to dream lies in the mind itself. It lies in the overcharging which demands discharge, and Robert judges with perfect consistency when he maintains that the causes determining the dream which depend on the physical state assume a subordinate rank, and could not incite dreams in a mind containing no material for dream formation taken from waking consciousness. It is admitted, however, that the phantasy pictures originating in the depths of the mind can be influenced by the nervous stimuli (p. 48). Thus, according to Robert, the dream is not quite so dependent on the somatic element. To be sure, it is not a psychic process, and has no place among the psychic processes of the waking state; it is a nocturnal somatic process in the apparatus devoted to mental activity, and has a function to perform, viz. to guard this apparatus against overstraining, or, if the comparison may be changed, to cleanse the mind.

Another author, Yves Delage, bases his theory on the same characteristics of the dream, which become clear in the selection of the dream material, and it is instructive to observe how a slight turn in the conception of the same things gives a final result of quite different bearing.

Delage, after having lost through death a person very dear to him, found from his own experience that we do not dream of what occupies us intently during the day, or that we begin to dream of it only after it is overshadowed by other interests of the day. His investigations among other persons corroborated the universality of this state of affairs. Delage makes a nice observation of this kind, if it turns out to be generally true, about the dreaming of newly married people: “S’ils ont été fortement épris, presque jamais ils n’ont rêve l’un de l’autre avant le mariage ou pendant la lune de miel; et s’ils ont rêve d’amour c’est pour être infidèles avec quelque personne indifférente ou odieuse.” But what does one dream of? Delage recognises that the material occurring in our dreams consists of fragments and remnants of impressions from the days preceding and former times. All that appears in our dreams, what at first we may be inclined to consider creations of the dream life, proves on more thorough investigation to be unrecognised reproductions, “souvenir inconscient.” But this presentation material shows a common character; 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 appearance. The less conscious, and at the same time the stronger the impression, the more prospect it has of playing a part in the next dream.

These are essentially the same two categories of impressions, the insignificant and the unadjusted, which were emphasized by Robert, but Delage changes the connection by assuming that these impressions become the subject of dreams, not because they are indifferent, but because they are unadjusted. The insignificant impressions, too, are in a way not fully adjusted; they, too, are from their nature as new impressions “autant de ressorts tendus,” which will be relaxed during sleep. Still more entitled to a rôle in the dream than the weak and almost unnoticed impression is a strong impression which has been accidentally detained in its elaboration or intentionally repressed. The psychic energy accumulated during the day through inhibition or suppression becomes the mainspring of the dream at night.

Unfortunately Delage stops here in his train of thought; he can ascribe only the smallest part to an independent psychic activity in the dream, and thus in his dream theory reverts to the ruling doctrine of a partial sleep of the brain: “En somme le rêve est le produit de la pensée errante, sans but et sans direction, se fixant successivement sur les souvenirs, qui ont gardé assez d’intensité pour se placer sur sa route et l’arrêter au passage, établissant entre eux un lien tantôt faible et indécis, tantôt plus fort et plus serré, selon que l’activité actuelle du cerveau est plus ou moins abolie par le sommeil.”

In a third group we may include those dream theories which ascribe to the dreaming mind the capacity and propensity for a special psychic activity, which in the waking state it can accomplish either not at all or only in an imperfect manner. From the activity of these capacities there usually results a useful function of the dream. The dignity bestowed upon the dream by older psychological authors falls chiefly in this category. I shall content myself, however, with quoting, in their place, the assertions of Burdach, by virtue of which the dream “is the natural activity of the mind, which is not limited by the force of the individuality, not disturbed by self-consciousness and not directed by self-determination, but is the state of life of the sensible central point indulging in free play” (p. 486).

Burdach and others apparently consider this revelling in the free use of one’s own powers as a state in which the mind refreshes itself and takes on new strength for the day work, something after the manner of a vacation holiday. Burdach, therefore, cites with approval the admirable words in which the poet Novalis lauds the sway of the dream: “The dream is a bulwark against the regularity and commonness of life, a free recreation of the fettered phantasy, in which it mixes together all the pictures of life and interrupts the continued earnestness of grown-up men with a joyous children’s play. Without the dream we should surely age earlier, and thus the dream may be considered perhaps not a gift directly from above, but a delightful task, a friendly companion, on our pilgrimage to the grave.”

The refreshing and curative activity of the dream is even more impressively depicted by Purkinje. “The productive dreams in particular would perform these functions. They are easy plays of the imagination, which have no connection with the events of the day. The mind does not wish to continue the tension of the waking life, but to release it and recuperate from it. It produces, in the first place, conditions opposed to those of the waking state. It cures sadness through joy, worry through hope and cheerfully distracting pictures, hatred through love and friendliness, and fear through courage and confidence; it calms doubt through conviction and firm belief, and vain expectations through realisation. Many sore spots in the mind, which the day keeps continually open, sleep heals by covering them and guarding against fresh excitement. Upon this the curative effect of time is partially based.” We all feel that sleep is beneficial to the psychic life, and the vague surmise of the popular consciousness apparently cannot be robbed of the notion that the dream is one of the ways in which sleep distributes its benefits.

The most original and most far-reaching attempt to explain the dream as a special activity of the mind, which can freely display itself only in the sleeping state, was the one undertaken by Scherner in 1861. Scherner’s book, written in a heavy and bombastic style, inspired by an almost intoxicated enthusiasm for the subject, which must repel us unless it can carry us away with it, places so many difficulties in the way of an analysis that we gladly resort to the clearer and shorter description in which the philosopher Volkelt presents Scherner’s theories: “From the mystic conglomerations and from all the gorgeous and magnificent billows there indeed flashes and irradiates an ominous light of sense, but the path of the philosopher does not thereby become clearer.” Such is the criticism of Scherner’s description from one of his own adherents.

Scherner does not belong to those authors who allow the mind to take along its undiminished capacities into the dream life. He indeed explains how in the dream the centrality and the spontaneous energy of the ego are enervated, how cognition, feeling, will, and imagination become changed through this decentralisation, and how no true mental character, but only the nature of a mechanism, belongs to the remnants of these psychic forces. But instead, the activity of the mind designated as phantasy, freed from all rational domination and hence completely uncontrolled, rises in the dream to absolute supremacy. To be sure, it takes the last building stones from the memory of the waking state, but it builds with them constructions as different from the structures of the waking state as day and night. It shows itself in the dream not only reproductive, but productive. Its peculiarities give to the dream life its strange character. It shows a preference for the unlimited, exaggerated, and prodigious, but because freed from the impeding thought categories, it gains a greater flexibility and agility and new pleasure; it is extremely sensitive to the delicate emotional stimuli of the mind and to the agitating affects, and it rapidly recasts the inner life into the outer plastic clearness. The dream phantasy lacks the language of ideas; what it wishes to say, it must clearly depict; and as the idea now acts strongly, it depicts it with the richness, force, and immensity of the mode in question.

Its language, however simple it may be, thus becomes circumstantial, cumbersome, and heavy. Clearness of language is rendered especially difficult by the fact that it shows a dislike for expressing an object by its own picture, but prefers a strange picture, if the latter can only express that moment of the object which it wishes to describe. This is the symbolising activity of the phantasy.... It is, moreover, of great significance that the dream phantasy copies objects not in detail, but only in outline and even this in the broadest manner. Its paintings, therefore, appear ingeniously light and graceful. The dream phantasy, however, does not stop at the mere representation of the object, but is impelled from within to mingle with the object more or less of the dream ego, and in this way to produce an action. The visual dream, e.g., depicts gold coins 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 is preponderately that of the organic sensory stimuli which are so obscure during the day (comp. p. 29); hence the phantastic theory of Scherner, and the perhaps over-sober theories of Wundt and other physiologists, though otherwise diametrically opposed, agree perfectly in their assumption of the dream sources and dream excitants. But whereas, according to the physiological theory, the psychic reaction to the inner physical stimuli becomes exhausted with the awakening of any ideas suitable to these stimuli, these ideas then by way of association calling to their aid other ideas, and with this stage the chain of psychic processes seeming to terminate according to Scherner, the physical stimuli only supply the psychic force with a material which it may render subservient to its phantastic intentions. For Scherner the formation of the dream only commences where in the conception of others it comes to an end.

The treatment of the physical stimuli by the dream phantasy surely cannot be considered purposeful. The phantasy plays a tantalising game with them, and represents the organic source which gives origin to the stimuli in the correspondent dream, in any plastic symbolism. Indeed Scherner holds the opinion, not shared by Volkelt and others, that the dream phantasy has a certain favourite representation for the entire organism; this representation would be the house. Fortunately, however, it does not seem to limit itself in its presentation to this material; it may also conversely employ a whole series of houses to designate a single organ, e.g., very long rows of houses for the intestinal excitation. On other occasions particular parts of the house actually represent particular parts of the body, as e.g., in the headache-dream, the ceiling of the room (which the dream sees covered with disgusting reptile-like spiders) represents the head.

Quite irrespective of the house symbolism, any other suitable object may be employed for the representation of these parts of the body which excite the dream. “Thus the breathing lungs find their symbol in the flaming stove with its gaseous roaring, the heart in hollow boxes and baskets, the bladder in round, bag-shaped, or simply hollowed objects. The male dream of sexual excitement makes the dreamer find in the street the upper portion of a clarinette, next to it the same part of a tobacco pipe, and next to that a piece of fur. The clarinette and tobacco pipe represent the approximate shape of the male sexual organ, while the fur represents the pubic hair. In the female sexual dream the tightness of the closely approximated thighs may be symbolised 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 gentleman” (Volkelt, p. 39). It is particularly noteworthy that at the end of such a physically exciting dream, the phantasy, as it were, unmasks by representing the exciting organ or its function unconcealed. Thus the “tooth-exciting dream” usually ends with the dreamer taking a tooth out of his mouth.

The dream phantasy may, however, not only direct its attention to the shape of the exciting organ, but it may also make the substance contained therein the object of the symbolisation. Thus the dream of intestinal excitement, e.g., may lead us through muddy streets, the bladder-exciting dream to foaming water. Or the stimulus itself, the manner of its excitation, and the object it covets, are represented symbolically, or the dream ego enters into a concrete combination with the symbolisation of its own state, as e.g., when, in the case of painful stimuli, we struggle desperately with vicious dogs or raging bulls, or when in the sexual dream the dreamer sees herself pursued by a naked man. Disregarding all the possible prolixity of elaboration, a symbolising phantastic activity remains as the central force of every dream. Volkelt, in his finely and fervently written book, next attempted to penetrate further into the character of this phantasy and to assign to the psychical activity thus recognised, its position in a system of philosophical ideas, which, however, remains altogether too difficult of comprehension for any one who is not prepared by previous schooling for the sympathetic comprehension of philosophical modes of thinking.

Scherner connects no useful function with the activity of the symbolising phantasy in dreams. In the dream the psyche plays with the stimuli at its disposal. One might presume that it plays in an improper manner. One might also ask us whether our thorough study of Scherner’s dream theory, the arbitrariness and deviation of which from the rules of all investigation are only too obvious, can lead to any useful results. It would then be proper for us to forestall the rejection of Scherner’s theory without examination by saying that this would be too arrogant. This theory is built up on the impression received from his dreams by a man who paid great attention to them, and who would appear to be personally very well fitted to trace obscure psychic occurrences. Furthermore it treats a subject which, for thousands of years, has appeared mysterious to humanity though rich in its contents and relations; and for the elucidation of which stern science, as it confesses itself, has contributed nothing beyond attempting, in entire opposition to popular sentiment, to deny the substance and significance of the object. Finally, let us frankly admit that apparently we cannot avoid the phantastical in our attempts to elucidate the dream. There are also phantastic ganglia cells; the passage cited on p. 63 from a sober and exact investigator like Binz, which depicts how the aurora of awakening flows along the dormant cell masses of the cerebrum, is not inferior in fancifulness and in improbability to Scherner’s attempts at interpretation. I hope to be able to demonstrate that there is something actual underlying the latter, though it has only been indistinctly observed and does not possess the character of universality entitling it to the claim of a dream theory. For the present, Scherner’s theory of the dream, in its contrast to the medical theory, may perhaps lead us to realise between what extremes the explanation of dream life is still unsteadily vacillating.

(h) Relations between the Dream and Mental Diseases.—When we speak of the relation of the dream to mental disturbances, we may think of three different things: (1) Etiological and clinical relations, as when a dream represents or initiates a psychotic condition, or when it leaves such a condition behind it. (2) Changes to which the dream life is subjected in mental diseases. (3) Inner relations between the dream and the psychoses, analogies indicating an intimate relationship. These manifold relations between the two series of phenomena have been a favourite theme of medical authors in the earlier periods of medical science—and again in recent times—as we learn from the literature on the subject gathered from Spitta, Radestock, Maury, and Tissié. Sante de Sanctis has lately directed his attention to this relationship. For the purposes of our discussion it will suffice merely to glance at this important subject.

In regard to the clinical and etiological relations between the dream and the psychoses, I will report the following observations as paradigms. Hohnbaum asserts (see Krauss, p. 39), that the first attack of insanity frequently originates in an anxious and terrifying dream, and that the ruling idea has connection with this dream. Sante de Sanctis adduces similar observations in paranoiacs, and declares the dream to be, in some of them, the “vraie cause déterminante de la folie.” The psychosis may come to life all of a sudden with the dream causing and containing the explanation for the mental disturbances, or it may slowly develop through further dreams that have yet to struggle against doubt. In one of de Sanctis’s cases, the affecting dream was accompanied by light hysterical attacks, which in their turn were followed by an anxious, melancholic state. Féré (cited by Tissié) refers to a dream which caused an hysterical paralysis. Here the dream is offered us as an etiology of mental disturbance, though we equally consider the prevailing conditions when we declare that the mental disturbance shows its first manifestation in dream life, that it has its first outbreak in the dream. In other instances the dream life contained the morbid symptoms, or the psychosis was limited to the dream life. Thus Thomayer calls attention to anxiety dreams which must be conceived as equivalent to epileptic attacks. Allison has described nocturnal insanity (cited by Radestock), in which the subjects are apparently perfectly well in the day-time, while hallucinations, fits of frenzy, and the like regularly appear at night. De Sanctis and Tissié report similar observations (paranoiac dream-equivalent in an alcoholic, voices accusing a wife of infidelity). Tissié reports abundant observations from recent times in which actions of a pathological character (based on delusions, obsessive impulses) had their origin in dreams. Guislain describes a case in which sleep was replaced by an intermittent insanity.

There is hardly any doubt that along with the psychology of the dream, the physician will one day occupy himself with the psychopathology of the dream. In cases of convalescence from insanity, it is often especially obvious that, while the functions of the day are normal, the dream life may still belong to the psychosis. Gregory is said first to have called attention to such cases (cited by Krauss). Macario (reported by Tissié) gives account of a maniac who, a week after his complete recovery again experienced in dreams the flight of ideas and the passionate impulses of his disease.

Concerning the changes to which the dream life is subjected in chronic psychotic persons, very few investigations have so far been made. On the other hand, timely attention has been called to the inner relationship between the dream and mental disturbance, which shows itself in an extensive agreement of the manifestations occurring to both. According to Maury, Cubanis, in his Rapports du physique et du moral, first called attention to this; following him came Lelut, J. Moreau, and more particularly the philosopher Maine de Biran. To be sure, the comparison is still older. Radestock begins the chapter dealing with this comparison, by giving a collection of expressions showing the analogy between the dream and insanity. Kant somewhere says: “The lunatic is a dreamer in the waking state.” According to Krauss “Insanity is a dream with the senses awake.” Schopenhauer terms the dream a short insanity, and insanity a long dream. Hagen describes the delirium as dream life which has not been caused by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in the Physiological Psychology, declares: “As a matter of fact we may in the dream ourselves live through almost all symptoms which we meet in the insane asylums.”

The specific agreements, on the basis of which such an identification commends itself to the understanding, are enumerated by Spitta. And indeed, very similarly, by Maury in the following grouping: “(1) Suspension or at least retardation, of self-consciousness, consequent ignorance of the condition as such, and hence incapability of astonishment and lack of moral consciousness. (2) Modified perception of the sensory organs; that is, perception is diminished in the dream and generally enhanced in insanity. (3) Combination of ideas with each other exclusively in accordance with the laws of association and of reproduction, hence automatic formation of groups and for this reason disproportion in the relations between ideas (exaggerations, phantasms). And as a result of all this: (4) Changing or transformation of the personality and at times of the peculiarities of character (perversities).”

Radestock gives some additional features or analogies in the material: “Most hallucinations and illusions are found in the sphere of the senses of sight and hearing and general sensation. As in the dream, the smallest number of elements is supplied by the senses of smell and taste. The fever patient, like the dreamer, is assaulted by reminiscences from the remote past; what the waking and healthy man seems to have forgotten is recollected in sleep and in disease.” The analogy between the dream and the psychosis receives its full value only when, like a family resemblance, it is extended to the finer mimicry and to the individual peculiarities of facial expression.

“To him who is tortured by physical and mental sufferings the dream accords what has been denied him by reality, to wit, physical well-being and happiness; so the insane, too, see the bright pictures of happiness, greatness, sublimity, and riches. The supposed possession of estates and the imaginary fulfilment of wishes, the denial or destruction of which have just served as a psychic cause of the insanity, often form the main content of the delirium. The woman who has lost a dearly beloved child, in her delirium experiences maternal joys; the man who has suffered reverses of fortune deems himself immensely wealthy; and the jilted girl pictures herself in the bliss of tender love.” The above passage from Radestock, an abstract of a keen discussion of Griesinger (p. 111), reveals with the greatest clearness the wish fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagination, common to the dream and the psychosis. (My own investigations have taught me that here the key to a psychological theory of the dream and of the psychosis is to be found.)

“Absurd combinations of ideas and weakness of judgment are the main characteristics of the dream and of insanity.” The over-estimation of one’s own mental capacity, which appears absurd to sober judgment, is found alike both in one and the other, and the rapid course of ideas in the dream corresponds to the flight of ideas in the psychosis. Both are devoid of any measure of time. The dissociation of personality in the dream, which, for instance, distributes one’s own knowledge between two persons, one of whom, the strange one, corrects in the dream one’s own ego, fully corresponds to the well-known splitting of personality in hallucinatory paranoia; the dreamer, too, hears his own thoughts expressed by strange voices. Even the constant delusions find their analogy in the stereotyped recurring pathological dreams (rêve obsédant). After recovering from a delirium, patients not infrequently declare that the disease appeared to them like an uncomfortable dream; indeed, they inform us that occasionally, even during the course of their sickness, they have felt that they were only dreaming, just as it frequently happens in the sleeping dream.

Considering all this, it is not surprising that Radestock condenses his own opinion and that of many others into the following: “Insanity, an abnormal phenomenon of disease, is to be regarded as an enhancement of the periodically recurring normal dream states” (p. 228). Krauss attempted to base the relationship between the dream and insanity upon the etiology (or rather upon the exciting sources), perhaps making the relationship even more intimate than was possible through the analogy of the phenomena they manifest. According to him, the fundamental element common to both is, as we have learned, the organically determined sensation, the sensation of physical stimuli, the general feeling produced by contributions from all the organs. Cf. Peise, cited by Maury (p. 60).

The incontestable agreement between the dream and mental disturbance, extending into characteristic details, constitutes one of the strongest supports of the medical theory of dream life, according to which the dream is represented as a useless and disturbing process and as the expression of a reduced psychic activity. One cannot expect, however, to derive the final explanation of the dream from the mental disturbances, as it is generally known in what unsatisfactory state our understanding of the origin of the latter remains. It is very probably, however, that a modified conception of the dream must also influence our views in regard to the inner mechanism of mental disturbances, and hence we may say that we are engaged in the elucidation of the psychosis when we endeavour to clear up the mystery of the dream.

I shall have to justify myself for not extending my summary of the literature of the dream problems over the period between the first appearance of this book and its second edition. If this justification may not seem very satisfactory to the reader, I was nevertheless influenced by it. The motives which mainly induced me to summarise the treatment of the dream in the literature have been exhausted with the foregoing introduction; to have continued with this work would have cost me extraordinary effort and would have afforded little advantage or knowledge. For the period of nine years referred to has yielded nothing new or valuable either for the conception of the dream in actual material or in points of view. In most of the publications that have since appeared my work has remained unmentioned and unregarded; naturally least attention has been bestowed upon it by the so-called “investigators of dreams,” who have thus afforded a splendid example of the aversion characteristic of scientific men to learning something new. “Les savants ne sont pas curieux,” said the scoffer Anatole France. If there were such a thing in science as right to revenge, I in turn should be justified in ignoring the literature since the appearance of this book. The few accounts that have appeared in scientific journals are so full of folly and misconception that my only possible answer to my critics would be to request them to read this book over again. Perhaps also the request should be that they read it as a whole.

In the works of those physicians who make use of the psychoanalytic method of treatment (Jung, Abraham, Riklin, Muthmann, Stekel, Rank, and others), an abundance of dreams have been reported and interpreted in accordance with my instructions. In so far as these works go beyond the confirmation of my assertions I have noted their results in the context of my discussion. A supplement to the literary index at the end of this book brings together the most important of these new publications. The voluminous book on the dream by Sante de Sanctis, of which a German translation appeared soon after its publication, has, so to speak, crossed with mine, so that I could take as little notice of him as the Italian author could of me. Unfortunately, I am further obliged to declare that this laborious work is exceedingly poor in ideas, so poor that one could never divine from it the existence of the problems treated by me.

I have finally to mention two publications which show a near relation to my treatment of the dream problems. A younger philosopher, H. Swoboda, who has undertaken to extend W. Fliesse’s discovery of biological periodicity (in groups of twenty-three and twenty-eight days) to the psychic field, has produced an imaginative work,[P] in which, among other things, he has used this key to solve the riddle of the dream. The interpretation of dreams would herein have fared badly; the material contained in dreams would be explained through the coincidence of all those memories which during the night complete one of the biological periods for the first or the n-th time. A personal statement from the author led me to assume that he himself no longer wished to advocate this theory earnestly. But it seems I was mistaken in this conclusion; I shall report in another place some observations in reference to Swoboda’s assertion, concerning the conclusions of which I am, however, not convinced. It gave me far greater pleasure to find accidentally, in an unexpected place, a conception of the dream in essentials fully agreeing with my own. The circumstances of time preclude the possibility that this conception was influenced by a reading of my book; I must therefore greet this as the only demonstrable concurrence in the literature with the essence of my dream theory. The book which contains the passage concerning the dream which I have in mind was published as a second edition in 1900 by Lynkus under the title Phantasien eines Realisten.

The title which I have given my treatise indicates the tradition which I wish to make the starting-point in my discussion of dreams. I have made it my task to show that dreams are capable of interpretation, and contributions to the solution of the dream problems that have just been treated can only be yielded as possible by-products of the settlement of my own particular problem. With the hypothesis that dreams are interpretable, I at once come into contradiction with the prevailing dream science, in fact with all dream theories except that of Scherner, for to “interpret a dream” means to declare its meaning, to replace it by something which takes its place in the concatenation of our psychic activities as a link of full importance and value. But, as we have learnt, the scientific theories of the dream leave no room for a problem of dream interpretation, for, in the first place, according to these, the dream is no psychic action, but a somatic process which makes itself known to the psychic apparatus by means of signs. The opinion of the masses has always been quite different. It asserts its privilege of proceeding illogically, and although it admits the dream to be incomprehensible and absurd, it cannot summon the resolution to deny the dream all significance. Led by a dim intuition, it seems rather to assume that the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach the hidden signification of the dream.

The laity has, therefore, always endeavoured to “interpret” the dream, and in doing so has tried two essentially different methods. The first of these procedures regards the dream content as a whole and seeks to replace it by another content which is intelligible and in certain respects analogous. This is symbolic dream interpretation; it naturally goes to pieces at the outset in the case of those dreams which appear not only unintelligible but confused. The construction which the biblical Joseph places upon the dream of Pharaoh furnishes an example of its procedure. The seven fat kine, after which came seven lean ones which devour the former, furnish a symbolic substitute for a prediction of seven years of famine in the land of Egypt, which will consume all the excess which seven fruitful years have created. Most of the artificial dreams contrived by poets are intended for such symbolic interpretation, for they reproduce the thought conceived by the poet in a disguise found to be in accordance with the characteristics of our dreaming, as we know these from experience.[Q] The idea that the dream concerns itself chiefly with future events whose course it surmises in advance—a relic of the prophetic significance with which dreams were once credited—now becomes the motive for transplanting the meaning of the dream, found by means of symbolic interpretation, into the future by means of an “it shall.”

A demonstration of the way in which such symbolic interpretation is arrived at cannot, of course, be given. Success remains a matter of ingenious conjecture, of direct intuition, and for this reason dream interpretation has naturally been elevated to an art, which seems to depend upon extraordinary gifts.[R] The other of the two popular methods of dream interpretation entirely abandons such claims. It might be designated as the “cipher method,” since it treats the dream as a kind of secret code, in which every sign is translated into another sign of known meaning, according to an established key. For example, I have dreamt of a letter, and also of a funeral or the like; I consult a “dream book,” and find that “letter” is to be translated by “vexation,” and “funeral” by “marriage, engagement.” It now remains to establish a connection, which I again am to assume pertains to the future, by means of the rigmarole which I have deciphered. An interesting variation of this cipher procedure, a variation by which its character of purely mechanical transference is to a certain extent corrected, is presented in the work on dream interpretation by Artemidoros of Daldis. Here not only the dream content, but also the personality and station in life of the dreamer, are taken into consideration, so that the same dream content has a significance for the rich man, the married man, or the orator, which is different from that for the poor man, the unmarried man, or, say, the merchant. The essential point, then, in this procedure is that the work of interpretation is not directed to the entirety of the dream, but to each portion of the dream content by itself, as though the dream were a conglomeration, in which each fragment demands a particular disposal. Incoherent and confused dreams are certainly the ones responsible for the invention of the cipher method.[S]

The worthlessness of both these popular interpretation procedures for the scientific treatment of the subject cannot be questioned for a moment. The symbolic method is limited in its application and is capable of no general demonstration. In the cipher method everything depends upon whether the key, the dream book, is reliable, and for that all guarantees are lacking. One might be tempted to grant the contention of the philosophers and psychiatrists and to dismiss the problem of dream interpretation as a fanciful one. I have come, however, to think differently. I have been forced to admit that here once more we have one of those not infrequent cases where an ancient and stubbornly retained popular belief seems to have come nearer to the truth of the matter than the judgment of the science which prevails to-day. I must insist that the dream actually has significance, and that a scientific procedure in dream interpretation is possible. I have come upon the knowledge of this procedure in the following manner:—

For several years I have been occupied with the solution of certain psychopathological structures in hysterical phobias, compulsive ideas, and the like, for therapeutic purposes. I have been so occupied since becoming familiar with an important report of Joseph Breuer to the effect that in those structures, regarded as morbid symptoms, solution and treatment go hand in hand.[T] Where it has been possible to trace such a pathological idea back to the elements in the psychic life of the patient to which it owes its origin, this idea has crumbled away, and the patient has been relieved of it. In view of the failure of our other therapeutic efforts, and in the face of the mysteriousness of these conditions, it seems to me tempting, in spite of all difficulties, to press forward on the path taken by Breuer until the subject has been fully understood. We shall have elsewhere to make a detailed report upon the form which the technique of this procedure has finally assumed, and the results of the efforts which have been made. In the course of these psychoanalytical studies, I happened upon dream interpretation. My patients, after I had obliged them to inform me of all the ideas and thoughts which came to them in connection with the given theme, related their dreams, and thus taught me that a dream may be linked into the psychic concatenation which must be followed backwards into the memory from the pathological idea as a starting-point. The next step was to treat the dream as a symptom, and to apply to it the method of interpretation which had been worked out for such symptoms.

For this a certain psychic preparation of the patient is necessary. The double effort is made with him, to stimulate his attention for his psychic perceptions and to eliminate the critique with which he is ordinarily in the habit of viewing the thoughts which come to the surface in him. For the purpose of self-observation with concentrated attention, it is advantageous that the patient occupy a restful position and close his eyes; he must be explicitly commanded to resign the critique of the thought-formations which he perceives. He must be told further that the success of the psychoanalysis depends upon his noticing and telling everything that passes through his mind, and that he must not allow himself to suppress one idea because it seems to him unimportant or irrelevant to the subject, or another because it seems nonsensical. He must maintain impartiality towards his ideas; for it would be owing to just this critique if he were unsuccessful in finding the desired solution of the dream, the obsession, or the like.

I have noticed in the course of my psychoanalytic work that the state of mind of a man in contemplation is entirely different from that of a man who is observing his psychic processes. In contemplation there is a greater play of psychic action than in the most attentive self-observation; this is also shown by the tense attitude and wrinkled brow of contemplation, in contrast with the restful features of self-observation. In both cases, there must be concentration of attention, but, besides this, in contemplation one exercises a critique, in consequence of which he rejects some of the ideas which he has perceived, and cuts short others, so that he does not follow the trains of thought which they would open; toward still other thoughts he may act in such a manner that they do not become conscious at all—that is to say, they are suppressed before they are perceived. In self-observation, on the other hand, one has only the task of suppressing the critique; if he succeeds in this, an unlimited number of ideas, which otherwise would have been impossible for him to grasp, come to his consciousness. With the aid of this material, newly secured for the purpose of self-observation, the interpretation of pathological ideas, as well as of dream images, can be accomplished. As may be seen, the point is to bring about a psychic state to some extent analogous as regards the apportionment of psychic energy (transferable attention) to the state prior to falling asleep (and indeed also to the hypnotic state).

In falling asleep, the “undesired ideas” come into prominence on account of the slackening of a certain arbitrary (and certainly also critical) action, which we allow to exert an influence upon the trend of our ideas; we are accustomed to assign “fatigue” as the reason for this slackening; the emerging undesired ideas as the reason are changed into visual and acoustic images. (Cf. the remarks of Schleiermacher and others, p. 40.) In the condition which is used for the analysis of dreams and pathological ideas, this activity is purposely and arbitrarily dispensed with, and the psychic energy thus saved, or a part of it, is used for the attentive following of the undesired thoughts now coming to the surface, which retain their identity as ideas (this is the difference from the condition of falling asleep). “Undesired ideas” are thus changed into “desired” ones.

The suspension thus required of the critique for these apparently “freely rising” ideas, which is here demanded and which is usually exercised on them, is not easy for some persons. The “undesired ideas” are in the habit of starting the most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent them from coming to the surface. But if we may credit our great poet-philosopher Friedrich Schiller, a very similar tolerance must be the condition of poetic production. At a point in his correspondence with Koerner, for the noting of which we are indebted to Mr. Otto Rank, Schiller answers a friend who complains of his lack of creativeness in the following words: “The reason for your complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intelligence imposes upon your imagination. I must here make an observation and illustrate it by an allegory. It does not seem beneficial, and it is harmful for the creative work of the mind, if the intelligence inspects too closely the ideas already pouring in, as it were, at the gates. Regarded by itself, an idea may be very trifling and very adventurous, but it perhaps becomes important on account of one which follows it; perhaps in a certain connection with others, which may seem equally absurd, it is capable of forming a very useful construction. The intelligence cannot judge all these things if it does not hold them steadily long enough to see them in connection with the others.

In the case of a creative mind, however, the intelligence has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, the ideas rush in pell-mell, and it is only then that the great heap is looked over and critically examined. Messrs. Critics, or whatever else you may call yourselves, you are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and transitory madness which is found in all creators, and whose longer or shorter duration distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints about barrenness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely” (Letter of December 1, 1788).

And yet, “such a withdrawal of the watchers from the gates of intelligence,” as Schiller calls it, such a shifting into the condition of uncritical self-observation, is in no way difficult. Most of my patients accomplish it after the first instructions; I myself can do it very perfectly, if I assist the operation by writing down my notions. The amount, in terms of psychic energy, by which the critical activity is in this manner reduced, and by which the intensity of the self-observation may be increased, varies widely according to the subject matter upon which the attention is to be fixed.

The first step in the application of this procedure now teaches us that not the dream as a whole, but only the parts of its contents separately, may be made the object of our attention. If I ask a patient who is as yet unpractised: “What occurs to you in connection with this dream?” as a rule he is unable to fix upon anything in his psychic field of vision. I must present the dream to him piece by piece, then for every fragment he gives me a series of notions, which may be designated as the “background thoughts” of this part of the dream. In this first and important condition, then, the method of dream interpretation which I employ avoids the popular, traditional method of interpretation by symbolism famous in the legends, and approaches the second, the “cipher method.” Like this one it is an interpretation in detail, not en masse; like this it treats the dream from the beginning as something put together—as a conglomeration of psychic images.

In the course of my psychoanalysis of neurotics, I have indeed already subjected many thousand dreams to interpretation, but I do not now wish to use this material in the introduction to the technique and theory of dream interpretation. Quite apart from the consideration that I should expose myself to the objection that these are dreams of neuropathic subjects, the conclusions drawn from which would not admit of reapplication to the dreams of healthy persons, another reason forces me to reject them. The theme which is naturally always the subject of these dreams, is the history of the disease which is responsible for the neurosis. For this purpose there would be required a very long introduction and an investigation into the nature and logical conditions of psychoneuroses, things which are in themselves novel and unfamiliar in the highest degree, and which would thus distract attention from the dream problem. My purpose lies much more in the direction of preparing the ground for a solution of difficult problems in the psychology of the neuroses by means of the solution of dreams. But if I eliminate the dreams of neurotics, I must not treat the remainder too discriminatingly. Only those dreams still remain which have been occasionally related to me by healthy persons of my acquaintance, or which I find as examples

in the literature of dream life. Unfortunately in all these dreams the analysis is lacking, without which I cannot find the meaning of the dream. My procedure is, of course, not as easy as that of the popular cipher method, which translates the given dream content according to an established key; I am much more prepared to find that the same dream may cover a different meaning in the case of different persons, and in a different connection I must then resort to my own dreams, as an abundant and convenient material, furnished by a person who is about normal, and having reference to many incidents of everyday life. I shall certainly be with doubts as to the trustworthiness of these “self-analyses.” Arbitrariness is here in no way avoided. In my opinion, conditions are more likely to be favourable in self-observation than in the observation of others; in any case, it is permissible to see how much can be accomplished by means of self-analysis. I must overcome further difficulties arising from inner self. One has a readily understood aversion to exposing so many intimate things from one’s own psychic life, and one does not feel safe from the misinterpretation of strangers. But one must be able to put one’s self beyond this. “Toute psychologiste,” writes Delbœuf, “est obligé de faire

l’aveu même de ses faiblesses s’il croit par là jeter du jour sur quelque problème obscure.” And I may assume that in the case of the reader, the immediate interest in the indiscretions which I must commit will very soon give way to exclusive engrossment in the psychological problems which are illuminated by them.

I shall, therefore, select one of my own dreams and use it to elucidate my method of interpretation. Every such dream necessitates a preliminary statement. I must now beg the reader to make my interests his own for a considerable time, and to become absorbed with me in the most trifling details of my life, for an interest in the hidden significance of dreams imperatively demands such transference.

Preliminary statement: In the summer of 1895 I had psychoanalytically treated a young lady who stood in close friendship to me and those near to me. It is to be understood that such a complication of relations may be the source of manifold feelings for the physician, especially for the psychotherapist. The personal interest of the physician is greater, his authority is less. A failure threatens to undermine the friendship with the relatives of the patient. The cure ended with partial success, the patient got rid of her hysterical fear, but not of all her somatic symptoms. I was at that time not yet sure of the criteria marking the final settlement of a hysterical case, and expected her to accept a solution which did not seem acceptable to her. In this disagreement, we cut short the treatment on account of the summer season. One day a younger colleague, one of my best friends, who had visited the patient—Irma—and her family in their country resort, came to see me. I asked him how he found her, and received the answer: “She is better, but not altogether well.” I realise that those words of my friend Otto, or the tone of voice in which they were spoken, made me angry. I thought I heard a reproach in the words, perhaps to the effect that I had promised the patient too much, and rightly or wrongly I traced Otto’s supposed siding against me to the influence of the relatives of the patient, who, I assume, had never approved of my treatment.

Moreover, my disagreeable impression did not become clear to me, nor did I give it expression. The very same evening, I wrote down the history of Irma’s case, in order to hand it, as though for my justification, to Dr. M., a mutual friend, who was at that time a leading figure in our circle. During the night following this evening (perhaps rather in the morning) I had the following dream, which was registered immediately after waking:—

_A great hall—many guests whom we are receiving—among them Irma, whom I immediately take aside, as though to answer her letter, to reproach her for not yet accepting the “solution.” I say to her: “If you still have pains, it is really only your own fault.” She answers: “If you only knew what pains I now have in the neck, stomach, and abdomen; I am drawn together.” I am frightened and look at her. She looks pale and bloated; I think that after all I must be overlooking some organic affection. I take her to the window and look into her throat. She shows some resistance to this, like a woman who has a false set of teeth. I think anyway she does not need them. The mouth then really opens without difficulty and I find a large white spot to the right, and at another place I see extended grayish-white scabs attached to curious curling formations, which have obviously been formed like the turbinated bone—I quickly call Dr. M., who repeats the examination and confirms it.... Dr. M.’s looks are altogether unusual; he is very pale, limps, and has no beard on his chin.... My friend Otto is now also standing next to her, and my friend Leopold percusses her small body and says: “She has some dulness on the left below,” and also calls attention to an infiltrated portion of the skin on the left shoulder (something which I feel as he does, in spite of the dress)....

M. says: “No doubt it is an infection, but it does not matter; dysentery will develop too, and the poison will be excreted.... We also have immediate knowledge of the origin of the infection. My friend Otto has recently given her an injection with a propyl preparation when she felt ill, propyls.... Propionic acid ... Trimethylamine (the formula of which I see printed before me in heavy type).... Such injections are not made so rashly.... Probably also the syringe was not clean.”_

This dream has an advantage over many others. It is at once clear with what events of the preceding day it is connected, and what subject it treats. The preliminary statement gives information on these points. The news about Irma’s health which I have received from Otto, the history of the illness upon which I have written until late at night, have occupied my psychic activity even during sleep. In spite of all this, no one, who has read the preliminary report and has knowledge of the content of the dream, has been able to guess what the dream signifies. Nor do I myself know. I wonder about the morbid symptoms, of which Irma complains in the dream, for they are not the same ones for which I have treated her. I smile about the consultation with Dr. M. I smile at the nonsensical idea of an injection with propionic acid, and at the consolation attempted by Dr. M. Towards the end the dream seems more obscure and more terse than at the beginning. In order to learn the significance of all this, I am compelled to undertake a thorough analysis. ANALYSIS The hall—many guests, whom we are receiving.

We were living this summer at the Bellevue, in an isolated house on one of the hills which lie close to the Kahlenberg. This house was once intended as a place of amusement, and on this account has unusually high, hall-like rooms. The dream also occurred at the Bellevue, a few days before the birthday of my wife. During the day, my wife had expressed the expectation that several friends, among them Irma, would come to us as guests for her birthday. My dream, then, anticipates this situation: It is the birthday of my wife, and many people, among them Irma, are received by us as guests in the great hall of the Bellevue. I reproach Irma for not having accepted the solution. I say: “If you still have pains, it is your own fault.”

I might have said this also, or did say it, while awake. At that time I had the opinion (recognised later to be incorrect) that my task was limited to informing patients of the hidden meaning of their symptoms. Whether they then accepted or did not accept the solution upon which success depended—for that I was not responsible. I am thankful to this error, which fortunately has now been overcome, for making life easier for me at a time when, with all my unavoidable ignorance, I was to produce successful cures. But I see in the speech which I make to Irma in the dream, that above all things I do not want to be to blame for the pains which she still feels. If it is Irma’s own fault, it cannot be mine. Should the purpose of the dream be looked for in this quarter? Irma’s complaints; pains in the neck, abdomen, and stomach; she is drawn together.

Pains in the stomach belonged to the symptom-complex of my patient, but they were not very prominent; she complained rather of sensations of nausea and disgust. Pains in the neck and abdomen and constriction of the throat hardly played a part in her case. I wonder why I decided upon this choice of symptoms, nor can I for the moment find the reason. She looks pale and bloated. My patient was always ruddy. I suspect that another person is here being substituted for her. I am frightened at the thought that I must have overlooked some organic affection. This, as the reader will readily believe, is a constant fear with the specialist, who sees neurotics almost exclusively, and who is accustomed to ascribe so many manifestations, which other physicians treat as organic, to hysteria. On the other hand, I am haunted by a faint doubt—I know not whence it comes—as to whether my fear is altogether honest. If Irma’s pains are indeed of organic origin, I am not bound to cure them. My treatment, of course, removes only hysterical pains. It seems to me, in fact, that I wish to find an error in the diagnosis; in that case the reproach of being unsuccessful would be removed.

_I take her to the window in order to look into her throat. She resists a little, like a woman who has false teeth. I think she does not need them anyway._