The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 1 THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF DREAM-PROBLEMS C. Dream-Stimuli and Sources

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CHAPTER ONE: THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OF DREAM-PROBLEMS

(UP TO 1900)

C. Dream-Stimuli and Sources

What is meant by dream-stimuli and dream-sources may be explained by a reference to the popular saying: "Dreams come from the stomach." This notion covers a theory which conceives the dream as resulting from a disturbance of sleep. We should not have dreamed if some disturbing element had not come into play during our sleep, and the dream is the reaction against this disturbance.

The discussion of the exciting causes of dreams occupies a great deal of space in the literature of dreams. It is obvious that this problem could have made its appearance only after dreams had become an object of biological investigation. The ancients, who conceived of dreams as divine inspirations, had no need to look for stimuli; for them a dream was due to the will of divine or demonic powers, and its content was the product of their special knowledge and intention. Science, however, immediately raised the question whether the stimuli of dreams were single or multiple, and this in turn led to the consideration whether the causal explanation of dreams belonged to the region of psychology or to that of physiology. Most authors appear to assume that disturbance of sleep, and hence dreams, may arise from various causes, and that physical as well as mental stimuli may play the part of dream-excitants. Opinions differ widely in preferring this or the other factor as the cause of dreams, and in classifying them in the order of importance.

Whenever the sources of dreams are completely enumerated they fall into the following four categories, which have also been employed in the classification of dreams: (1) external (objective) sensory stimuli; (2) internal (subjective) sensory stimuli; (3) internal (organic) physical stimuli; (4) Purely psychical sources of excitation.

1. External sensory stimuli
The younger Strumpell, the son of the philosopher, whose work on dreams has already more than once served us as a guide in considering the problems of dreams, has, as is well known, recorded his observations of a patient afflicted with general anaesthesia of the skin and with paralysis of several of the higher sensory organs. This man would laps into sleep whenever the few remaining sensory paths between himself and the outer world were closed. When we wish to fall asleep we are accustomed to strive for a condition similar to that obtaining in Strumpell's experiment. We close the most important sensory portals, the eyes, and we endeavour to protect the other senses from all stimuli or from any change of the stimuli already acting upon them. We then fall asleep, although our preparations are never wholly successful. For we can never completely insulate the sensory organs, nor can we entirely abolish the excitability of the sensory organs themselves. That we may at any time be awakened by intenser stimuli should prove to us "that the mind has remained in constant communication with the external world even during sleep." The sensory stimuli that reach us during sleep may easily become the source of dreams.

There are a great many stimuli of this nature, ranging from those unavoidable stimuli which are proper to the state of sleep or occasionally admitted by it, to those fortuitous stimuli which are calculated to wake the sleeper. Thus a strong light may fall upon the eyes, a noise may be heard, or an odour may irritate the mucous membranes of the nose. In our unintentional movements during sleep we may lay bare parts of the body, and thus expose them to a sensation of cold, or by a change of position we may excite sensations of pressure and touch. A mosquito may bite us, or a slight nocturnal mischance may simultaneously attack more than one sense- organ. Observers have called attention to a whole series of dreams in which the stimulus ascertained on waking and some part of the dream-content corresponded to such a degree that the stimulus could be recognized as the source of the dream.

I shall here cite a number of such dreams, collected by Jessen (p. 527), which are traceable to more or less accidental objective sensory stimuli. Every noise indistinctly perceived gives rise to corresponding dream- representations; the rolling of thunder takes us into the thick of battle, the crowing of a cock may be transformed into human shrieks of terror, and the creaking of a door may conjure up dreams of burglars breaking into the house. When one of our blankets slips off us at night we may dream that we are walking about naked, or falling into water. If we lie diagonally across the bed with our feet extending beyond the edge, we may dream of standing on the brink of a terrifying precipice, or of falling from a great height. Should our head accidentally get under the pillow we may imagine a huge rock overhanging us and about to crush us under its weight. An accumulation of semen produces voluptuous dreams, and local pains give rise to ideas of suffering ill-treatment, of hostile attacks, or of accidental bodily injuries....

"Meier (Versuch einer Erklarung des Nachtwandelns, Halle, 1758, p. 33) once dreamed of being attacked by several men who threw him flat on the ground and drove a stake into the earth between his first and second toes. While imagining this in his dream he suddenly awoke and felt a piece of straw sticking between his toes. The same author, according to Hemmings (Von den Traumen und Nachtwandlern, Weimar, 1784, p. 258), "dreamed on another occasion, when his nightshirt was rather too tight round his neck, that he was being hanged. In his youth Hoffbauer dreamed of having fallen from a high wall, and found, on waking, that the bedstead had come apart, and that he had actually fallen on to the floor.... Gregory relates that he once applied a hot-water bottle to his feet, and dreamed of taking a trip to the summit of Mount Etna, where he found the heat of the soil almost unbearable. After having a blister applied to his head, another man dreamed of being scalped by Indians; still another, whose shirt was damp, dreamed that he was dragged through a stream. An attack of gout caused a patient to believe that he was in the hands of the Inquisition, and suffering the pains of torture (Macnish)."

The argument that there is a resemblance between the dream-stimulus and the dream-content would be confirmed if, by a systematic induction of stimuli, we should succeed in producing dreams corresponding to these stimuli. According to Macnish such experiments had already been made by Giron de Buzareingues. "He left his knee exposed and dreamed of travelling on a mail- coach by night. He remarked, in this connection, that travellers were well aware how cold the knees become in a coach at night. On another occasion he left the back of his head uncovered, and dreamed that he was taking part in a religious ceremony in the open air. In the country where he lived it was customary to keep the head always covered except on occasions of this kind."

Maury reports fresh observation on self-induced dreams of his own. (A number of other experiments were unsuccessful.)

1. He was tickled with a feather on his lips and on the tip of his nose. He dreamed of an awful torture, viz., that a mask of pitch was stuck to his face and then forcibly torn off, bringing the skin with it.

2. Scissors were whetted against a pair of tweezers. He heard bells ringing, then sounds of tumult which took him back to the days of the Revolution of 1848.

3. Eau de Cologne was held to his nostrils. He found himself in Cairo, in the shop of Johann Maria Farina. This was followed by fantastic adventures which he was not able to recall.

4. His neck was lightly pinched. He dreamed that a blister was being applied, and thought of a doctor who had treated him in childhood.

5. A hot iron was brought near his face. He dreamed that chauffeurs * had broken into the house, and were forcing the occupants to give up their money by thrusting their feet into braziers. The Duchesse d'Abrantes, whose secretary he imagined himself to be then entered the room.

* Chauffeurs were bands of robbers in the Vendee who resorted to this form of torture.

6. A drop of water was allowed to fall on to his forehead. He imagined himself in Italy, perspiring heavily, and drinking the white wine of Orvieto.

7. When the light of a candle screened with red paper was allowed to fall on his face, he dreamed of thunder, of heat, and of a storm at sea which he once witnessed in the English Channel.

Hervey, Weygandt, and others have made attempts to produce dreams experimentally.

Many have observed the striking skill of the dream in interweaving into its structure sudden impressions from the outer world, in such a manner as to represent a gradually approaching catastrophe (Hildebrandt). "In former years," this author relates, "I occasionally made use of an alarm-clock in order to wake punctually at a certain hour in the morning. It probably happened hundreds of times that the sound of this instrument fitted into an apparently very long and connected dream, as though the entire dream had been especially designed for it, as though it found in this sound its appropriate and logically indispensable climax, its inevitable denouement."

I shall presently have occasion to cite three of these alarm-clock dreams in a different connection.

Volkelt (p. 68) relates: "A composer once dreamed that he was teaching a class, and was just explaining something to his pupils. When he had finished he turned to one of the boys with the question: 'Did you understand me?' The boy cried out like one possessed 'Oh, ja!' Annoyed by this, he reprimanded his pupil for shouting. But now the entire class was screaming 'Orja,' then 'Eurjo,' and finally 'Feuerjo.' He was then aroused by the actual fire alarm in the street."

Garnier (Traite des facultes de l'ame, 1865), on the authority of Radestock, relates that Napoleon I, while sleeping in a carriage, was awakened from a dream by an explosion which took him back to the crossing of the Tagliamento and the bombardment of the Austrians, so that he started up, crying, "We have been undermined."

The following dream of Maury's has become celebrated: He was ill in bed; his mother was sitting beside him. He dreamed of the Reign of Terror during the Revolution. He witnessed some terrible scenes of murder, and finally he himself was summoned before the Tribunal. There he saw Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier-Tinville, and all the sorry heroes of those terrible days; he had to give an account of himself, and after all manner of incidents which did not fix themselves in his memory, he was sentenced to death. Accompanied by an enormous crowd, he was led to the place of execution. He mounted the scaffold; the executioner tied him to the plank, it tipped over, and the knife of the guillotine fell. He felt his head severed from his trunk, and awakened in terrible anxiety, only to find that the head-board of the bed had fallen, and had actually struck the cervical vertebrae just where the knife of the guillotine would have fallen.

This dream gave rise to an interesting discussion, initiated by Le Lorrain and Egger in the Revue Philosophique, as to whether, and how, it was possible for the dreamer to crowd together an amount of dream-content apparently so large in the short space of time elapsing between the perception of the waking stimulus and the moment of actual waking.

Examples of this nature show that objective stimuli occurring in sleep are among the most firmly-established of all the sources of dreams; they are, indeed, the only stimuli of which the layman knows anything whatever. If we ask an educated person who is not familiar with the literature of dreams how dreams originate, he is certain to reply by a reference to a case known to him in which a dream has been explained after waking by a recognized objective stimulus. Science, however, cannot stop here, but is incited to further investigation by the observation that the stimulus influencing the senses during sleep does not appear in the dream at all in its true form, but is replaced by some other representation, which is in some way related to it. But the relation existing between the stimulus and the resulting dream is, according to Maury, "une affinite quelconque mais qui n'est pas unique et exclusive" * (p. 72). If we read, for example, three of Hildebrandt's "alarm-clock dreams," we shall be compelled to ask why the same casual stimulus evoked so many different results, and why just these results and no others.

* A sort of relation which is, however, neither unique nor exclusive.

(p. 37): "I am taking a walk on a beautiful spring morning. I stroll through the green meadows to a neighbouring village, where I see numbers of the inhabitants going to church, wearing their best clothes and carrying their hymn-books under their arms. I remember that it is Sunday, and that the morning service will soon begin. I decide to attend it, but as I am rather overheated I think I will wait in the churchyard until I am cooler. While reading the various epitaphs, I hear the sexton climbing the church- tower, and I see above me the

small bell which is about to ring for the beginning of service. For a little while it hangs motionless; then it begins to swing, and suddenly its notes resound so clearly and penetratingly that my sleep comes to an end. But the notes of the bell come from the alarm-clock."

"A second combination. It is a bright winter day; the streets are deep in snow. I have promised to go on a sleigh-ride, but I have to wait some time before I am told that the sleigh is at the door. Now I am preparing to get into the sleigh. I put on my furs, the foot-warmer is put in, and at last I have taken my seat. But still my departure is delayed. At last the reins are twitched, the horses start, and the sleigh bells, now violently shaken, strike up their familiar music with a force that instantly tears the gossamer of my dream. Again it is only the shrill note of my alarm- clock."

"Yet a third example. I see the kitchen-maid walking along the passage to the dining-room, with a pile of several dozen plates. The porcelain column in her arms seems to me to be in danger of losing its equilibrium. 'Take care,' I exclaim, 'you will drop the whole pile!' The usual retort is naturally made- that she is used to such things, etc. Meanwhile I continue to follow her with my anxious gaze, and behold, at the threshold the fragile plates fall and crash and roll across the floor in hundreds of pieces. But I soon perceive that the endless din is not really a rattling but a true ringing, and with this ringing the dreamer now becomes aware that the alarm-clock has done its duty."

The question why the dreaming mind misjudges the nature of the objective sensory stimulus has been answered by Strumpell, and in an almost identical fashion by Wundt; their explanation is that the reaction of the mind to the stimulus attacking sleep is complicated and confused by the formation of illusions. A sensory impression is recognized by us and correctly interpreted- that is, it is classed with the memory-group to which it belongs according to all previous experience if the impression is strong, clear, and sufficiently prolonged, and if we have sufficient time to submit it to those mental processes. But if these conditions are not fulfilled we mistake the object which gives rise to the impression, and on the basis of this impression we construct an illusion. "If one takes a walk in an open field and perceives indistinctly a distant object, it may happen that one will at first take it for a horse." On closer inspection the image of a cow, resting, may obtrude itself, and the picture may finally resolve itself with certainty into a group of people sitting on the ground. The impressions which the mind receives during sleep from external stimuli are of a similarly indistinct nature; they give rise to illusions because the impression evokes a greater or lesser number of memory-images, through which it acquires its psychic value. As for the question, in which of the many possible spheres of memory the corresponding images are aroused, and which of the possible associative connections are brought into play, that- to quote Strumpell again- is indeterminable, and is left, as it were, to the caprices of the mind.

Here we may take our choice. We may admit that the laws of dream-formation cannot really be traced any further, and so refrain from asking whether or not the interpretation of the illusion evoked by the sensory impression depends upon still other conditions; or we may assume that the objective sensory stimulus encroaching upon sleep plays only a modest role as a dream- source, and that other factors determine the choice of the memory-image to be evoked. Indeed, on carefully examining Maury's experimentally produced dreams, which I have purposely cited in detail, one is inclined to object that his investigations trace the origin of only one element of the dreams, and that the rest of the dream-content seems too independent and too full of detail to be explained by a single requirement, namely, that it must correspond with the element experimentally introduced. Indeed, one even begins to doubt the illusion theory, and the power of objective impressions to shape the dream, when one realizes that such impressions are sometimes subjected to the most peculiar and far-fetched interpretations in our dreams. Thus M. Simon tells of a dream in which he saw persons of gigantic stature * seated at a table, and heard distinctly the horrible clattering produced by the impact of their jaws as they chewed their food. On waking he heard the clatter of a horse's hooves as it galloped past his window. If in this case the sound of the horse's hooves had revived ideas from the memory-sphere of Gulliver's Travels, the sojourn with the giants of Brobdingnag, and the virtuous horse-like creatures- as I should perhaps interpret the dream without any assistance on the author's part- ought not the choice of a memory-sphere so alien to the stimulus to be further elucidated by other motives?

* Gigantic persons in a dream justify the assumption that the dream is dealing with a scene from the dreamer's childhood. This interpretation of the dream as a reminiscence of Gulliver's Travels is, by the way, a good example of how an interpretation should not be made. The dream-interpreter should not permit his own intelligence to operate in disregard of the dreamer's impressions.

2. Internal (subjective) sensory stimuli
All objections to the contrary notwithstanding, we must admit that the role of the objective sensory stimuli as producers of dreams has been indisputably established, and if, having regard to their nature and their frequency, these stimuli seem perhaps insufficient to explain all dream- pictures, this indicates that we should look for other dream-sources which act in a similar fashion. I do not know where the idea first arose that together with the external sensory stimuli the internal (subjective) stimuli should also be considered, but as a matter of fact this has been done more or less explicitly in all the more recent descriptions of the aetiology of dreams. "I believe," says Wundt (p. 363), "that an important part is played in dream-illusions by those subjective sensations of sight and hearing which are familiar to us in the waking state as a luminous chaos in the dark field of the vision, and a ringing, buzzing, etc., of the ears, and in especial, subjective irritations of the retina. This explains the remarkable tendency of dreams to delude the eyes with numbers of similar or identical objects. Thus we see outspread before our eyes innumerable birds, butterflies, fishes, coloured beads, flowers, etc. Here the luminous dust in the dark field of vision has assumed fantastic forms, and the many luminous points of which it consists are embodied in our dreams in as many single images, which, owing to the mobility of the luminous chaos, are seen as moving objects. This is perhaps the reason of the dream's decided preference for the most varied animal forms, for owing to the multiplicity of such forms they can readily adapt themselves to the subjective luminous images."

The subjective sensory stimuli as a source of dreams have the obvious advantage that, unlike objective stimuli, they are independent of external accidents. They are, so to speak, at the disposal of the interpretation whenever they are required. But they are inferior to the objective sensory stimuli by the fact that their claim to the role of dream-inciters- which observation and experiment have established in the case of objective stimuli- can in their case be verified with difficulty or not at all. The main proof of the dream-inciting power of subjective sensory stimuli is afforded by the so-called hypnogogic hallucinations, which have been described by Johann Muller as "phantastic visual manifestations." They are those very vivid and changeable pictures which with many people occur constantly during the period of falling asleep, and which may linger for a while even after the eyes have been opened. Maury, who was very subject to these pictures, made a thorough study of them, and maintained that they were related to or rather identical with dream-images. This had already been asserted by Johann Muller. Maury maintains that a certain psychic passivity is necessary for their origin; that it requires a relaxation of the intensity of attention (p. 59). But one may perceive a hypnogogic hallucination in any frame of mind if one falls into such a lethargy for a moment, after which one may perhaps wake up, until this oft-repeated process terminates in sleep. According to Maury, if one wakes up shortly after such an experience, it is often possible to trace in the dream the images which one has perceived before falling asleep as hypnogogic hallucinations (p. 134). Thus Maury on one occasion saw a series of images of grotesque figures with distorted features and curiously dressed hair, which obtruded themselves upon him with incredible importunity during the period of falling asleep, and which, upon waking, he recalled having seen in his dream. On another occasion, while suffering from hunger, because he was subjecting himself to a rather strict diet, he saw in one of his hypnogogic states a plate, and a hand armed with a fork taking some food from the plate. In his dream he found himself at a table abundantly supplied with food, and heard the clatter of the diner's forks. On yet another occasion, after falling asleep with strained and painful eyes, he had a hypnogogic hallucination of microscopically small characters, which he was able to decipher, one by one, only with a great effort; and on waking from sleep an hour later he recalled a dream in which there was an open book with very small letters, which he was obliged to read through with laborious effort.

Not only pictures, but auditory hallucinations of words, names, etc., may also occur hypnogogically, and then repeat themselves in the dream, like an overture announcing the principal motif of the opera which is to follow.

A more recent observer of hypnogogic hallucinations, G. Trumbull Ladd, follows the same lines as Johann Muller and Maury. By dint of practice he succeeded in acquiring the faculty of suddenly arousing himself, without opening his eyes, two to five minutes after gradually falling asleep. This enabled him to compare the disappearing retinal sensations with the dream- images remaining in his memory. He assures us that an intimate relation between the two can always be recognized, inasmuch as the luminous dots and lines of light spontaneously perceived by the retina produce, so to speak, the outline or scheme of the psychically perceived dream-images. For example, a dream in which he saw before him clearly printed lines, which he read and studied, corresponded with a number of luminous spots arranged in parallel lines; or, to express it in his own words: The clearly printed page resolved itself into an object which appeared to his waking perception like part of an actual printed page seen through a small hole in a sheet of paper, but at a distance too great to permit of its being read. Without in any way underestimating the central element of the phenomenon, Ladd believes that hardly any visual dream occurs in our minds that is not based on material furnished by this internal condition of retinal irritability. This is particularly true of dreams which occur shortly after falling asleep in a dark room, while dreams occurring in the morning, near the period of waking, receive their stimulus from the objective light penetrating the eye in a brightly-lit room. The shifting and infinitely variable character of the spontaneous luminous excitations of the retina exactly corresponds with the fitful succession of images presented to us in our dreams. If we attach any importance to Ladd's observations, we cannot underrate the productiveness of this subjective source of stimuli; for visual images, as we know, are the principal constituents of our dreams. The share contributed by the other senses, excepting, perhaps, the sense of hearing, is relatively insignificant and inconstant.

3. Internal (organic) physical stimuli
If we are disposed to look for the sources of dreams not outside but inside the organism, we must remember that almost all our internal organs, which in a state of health hardly remind us of their existence, may, in states of excitation- as we call them- or in disease, become a source of the most painful sensations, and must therefore be put on a par with the external excitants of pain and sensation. Strumpell, for example, gives expression to a long-familiar experience when he declares that "during sleep the psyche becomes far more deeply and broadly conscious of its coporality than in the waking state, and it is compelled to receive and to be influenced by certain stimulating impressions originating in parts of the body, and in alterations of the body, of which it is unconscious in the waking state." Even Aristotle declares it to be quite possible that a dream may draw our attention to incipient morbid conditions which we have not noticed in the waking state (owing to the exaggerated intensity of the impressions experienced in the dream; and some medical authors, who certainly did not believe in the prophetic nature of dreams, have admitted the significance of dreams, at least in so far as the predicting of disease is concerned. [Cf. M. Simon, p. 31, and many earlier writers.] *

* In addition to the diagnostic valuation of dreams (e.g., by Hippocrates) mention must also be made of their therapeutic significance in antiquity.

Among the Greeks there were dream oracles, which were vouchsafed to patients in quest of recovery. The patient betook himself to the temple of Apollo or Aesculapius; there he was subjected to various ceremonies, bathed, rubbed and perfumed. A state of exaltation having been thus induced, he was made to lie down in the temple on the skin of a sacrificial ram. He fell asleep and dreamed of remedies, which he saw in their natural form, or in symbolic images which the priests afterwards interpreted.

For further references concerning the remedial dreams of the Greeks, cf. Lehmann, i, 74; Bouche-Leclerq; Hermann, Gottesd. Altert. d. Gr., SS 41; Privataltert. SS 38, 16; Bottinger in Sprengel's Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Med., ii, p. 163, et seq.; W. Lloyd, Magnetism and Mesmerism in Antiquity, London, 1877; Dollinger, Heidentum und Judentum, p. 130.

Even in our days there seems to be no lack of authenticated examples of such diagnostic achievements on the part of dreams. Thus Tissie cites from Artigues (Essai sur la valeur semeiologique des Reves) the history of a woman of forty-three, who, during several years of apparently perfect health, was troubled with anxiety-dreams, and in whom a medical examination subsequently revealed an incipient affection of the heart, to which she presently succumbed.

Serious derangements of the internal organs clearly excite dreams in quite a number of persons. The frequency of anxiety-dreams in diseases of the heart and lungs has been generally realized; indeed, this function of the dream-life is emphasized by so many writers that I shall here content myself with a reference to the literature of the subject (Radestock, Spitta, Maury, M. Simon, Tissie). Tissie even believes that the diseased organs impress upon the dream-content its characteristic features. The dreams of persons suffering from diseases of the heart are generally very brief, and end in a terrified awakening; death under terrible circumstances almost always find a place in their content. Those suffering from diseases of the lungs dream of suffocation, of being crushed, and of flight, and a great many of them are subject to the familiar nightmare- which, by the way, Borner has succeeded in inducing experimentally by lying on the face and covering the mouth and nostrils. In digestive disturbances the dream contains ideas from the sphere of gustatory enjoyment and disgust. Finally, the influence of sexual excitement on the dream-content is obvious enough in everyone's experience, and provides the strongest confirmation of the whole theory of dream-instigation by organic sensation.

Moreover, if we study the literature of dreams it becomes quite evident that some writers (Maury, Weygandt) have been led to the study of dream- problems by the influence their own pathological state has had on the content of their dreams.

The enlargement of the number of dream-sources by such undeniably established facts is, however, not so important as one might be led to suppose; for dreams are, after all, phenomena which occur in healthy persons- perhaps in all persons, and every night- and a pathological state of the organs is evidently not one of the indispensable conditions. For us, however, the question is not whence particular dreams originate, but rather: what is the exciting cause of ordinary dreams in normal people?

But we have only to go a step farther to find a source of dreams which is more prolific than any of those mentioned above, and which promises indeed to be inexhaustible. If it is established that the bodily organs become, in sickness, an exciting source of dreams, and if we admit that the mind, when diverted during sleep from the outer world, can devote more of its attention to the interior of the body, we may readily assume that the organs need not necessarily become diseased in order to permit stimuli, which in one way or another grow into dream-images, to reach the sleeping mind. What in the waking state we vaguely perceive as a general sensation, perceptible by its quality alone- a sensation to which, in the opinion of physicians, all the organic systems contribute their share- this general sensation would at night attain a greater potency, and, acting through its individual components, would constitute the most prolific as well as the most usual source of dream-representations. We should then have to discover the laws by which organic stimuli are translated into dream- representations.

This theory of the origin of dreams is the one most favoured by all medical writers. The obscurity which conceals the essence of our being- the "moi splanchnique" as Tissie terms it- from our knowledge, and the obscurity of the origin of dreams, correspond so closely that it was inevitable that they should be brought into relation with one another. The theory according to which the organic sensations are responsible for dreams has, moreover, another attraction for the physician, inasmuch as it favours the aetiological union of the dream with mental derangement, both of which reveal so many points of agreement in their manifestations, since changes in the general organic massive sensation and in the stimuli emanating from the internal organs are also considered to have a far-reaching significance as regards the origin of the psychoses. It is therefore not surprising that the organic stimulus theory can be traced to several writers who have propounded this theory independently.

A number of writers have followed the train of thought developed by Schopenhauer in 1851. Our conception of the universe has its origin in the recasting by the intellect of the impressions which reach it from without in the moulds of time, space and causality. During the day the stimuli proceeding from the interior of the organism, from the sympathetic nervous system, exert at most an unconscious influence on our mood. At night, however, when the overwhelming effect of the impressions of the day is no longer operative, the impressions that surge upward from within are able to force themselves on our attention- just as in the night we hear the rippling of the brook that was drowned in the clamour of the day. But how else can the intellect react to these stimuli than by transforming them in accordance with its own function into things which occupy space and time and follow the lines of causality?- and so a dream originates. Thus Scherner, and after him Volkelt, endeavoured to discover the more intimate relations between physical sensations and dream-pictures; but we shall reserve the discussion of this point for our chapter on the theory of dreams.

As a result of a singularly logical analysis, the psychiatrist Krauss referred the origin of dreams, and also of deliria and delusions, to the same element, namely, to organically determined sensations. According to him, there is hardly any part of the organism which might not become the starting-point of a dream or a delusion. Organically determined sensations, he says, "may be divided into two classes: (1) general sensations- those affecting the whole system; (2) specific sensations- those that are immanent in the principal systems of the vegetative organism, and which may in turn be subdivided into five groups: (a) the muscular, (b) the pneumatic, (c) the gastric, (d) the sexual, (e) the peripheral sensations (p. 33 of the second article)."

The origin of the dream-image from physical sensations is conceived by Krauss as follows: The awakened sensation, in accordance with some law of association, evokes an idea or image bearing some relation to it, and combines with this idea or image, forming an organic structure, towards which, however, the consciousness does not maintain its normal attitude. For it does not bestow any attention on the sensation, but concerns itself entirely with the accompanying ideas; and this explains why the facts of the case have been so long misunderstood (p. 11 ff.). Krauss even gives this process the special name of "transubstantiation of the sensations into dream-images" (p. 24).

The influence of organic physical stimuli on the formation of dreams is today almost universally admitted, but the question as to the nature of the law underlying this relation is answered in various ways, and often obscurely. On the basis of the theory of physical excitation the special task of dream-interpretation is to trace back the content of a dream to the causative organic stimulus, and if we do not accept the rules of interpretation advanced by Scherner, we shall often find ourselves confronted by the awkward fact that the organic source of excitation reveals itself only in the content of the dream.

A certain agreement, however, appears in the interpretation of the various forms of dreams which have been designated as "typical," because they recur in so many persons with almost the same content. Among these are the well- known dreams of falling from a height, of the dropping out of teeth, of flying, and of embarrassment because one is naked or scantily clad. This last type of dream is said to be caused simply by the dreamer's perception, felt in his sleep, that he has thrown off the bedclothes and is uncovered. The dream that one's teeth are dropping out is explained by "dental irritation," which does not, however, of necessity imply a morbid condition of irritability in the teeth. According to Strumpell, the flying dream is the adequate image employed by the mind to interpret the quantum of stimulus emanating from the rising and sinking of the pulmonary lobes when the cutaneous sensation of the thorax has lapsed into insensibility. This latter condition causes the sensation which gives rise to images of hovering in the air. The dream of falling from a height is said to be due to the fact that an arm falls away from the body, or a flexed knee is suddenly extended, after unconsciousness of the sensation of cutaneous pressure has supervened, whereupon this sensation returns to consciousness, and the transition from unconsciousness to consciousness embodies itself psychically as a dream of falling (Strumpell, p. 118). The weakness of these fairly plausible attempts at explanation clearly lies in the fact that without any further elucidation they allow this or that group of organic sensations to disappear from psychic perception, or to obtrude themselves upon it, until the constellation favourable for the explanation has been established. Later on, however, I shall have occasion to return to the subject of typical dreams and their origin.

From a comparison of a series of similar dreams, M. Simon endeavoured to formulate certain rules governing the influence of organic sensations on the nature of the resulting dream. He says (p. 34): "If during sleep any organic apparatus, which normally participates in the expression of an affect, for any reason enters into the state of excitation to which it is usually aroused by the affect, the dream thus produced will contain representations which harmonize with that affect."

Another rule reads as follows (p. 35): "If, during sleep, an organic apparatus is in a state of activity, stimulation, or disturbance, the dream will present ideas which correspond with the nature of the organic function performed by that apparatus."

Mourly Vold has undertaken to prove the supposed influence of bodily sensation on the production of dreams by experimenting on a single physiological territory. He changed the positions of a sleeper's limbs, and compared the resulting dreams with these changes. He recorded the following results:

1. The position of a limb in a dream corresponds approximately to that of reality, i.e., we dream of a static condition of the limb which corresponds with the actual condition.

2. When one dreams of a moving limb it always happens that one of the positions occurring in the execution of this movement corresponds with the actual position.

3. The position of one's own limb may in the dream be attributed to another person.

4. One may also dream that the movement in question is impeded.

5. The limb in any particular position may appear in the dream as an animal or monster, in which case a certain analogy between the two is established.

6. The behaviour of a limb may in the dream incite ideas which bear some relation or other to this limb. Thus, for example, if we are using our fingers we dream of numerals.

Results such as these would lead me to conclude that even the theory of organic stimulation cannot entirely abolish the apparent freedom of the determination of the dream-picture which will be evoked. *

* See below for a further discussion of the two volumes of records of dreams since published by this writer.

4. Psychic sources of excitation
When considering the relation of dreams to waking life, and the provenance of the material of dreams, we learned that the earliest as well as the most recent investigators are agreed that men dream of what they do during the day, and of the things that interest them in the waking state. This interest, continued from waking life into sleep, is not only a psychic bond, joining the dream to life, but it is also a source of dreams whose importance must not be underestimated, and which, taken together with those stimuli which become active and of interest during sleep, suffices to explain the origin of all dream-images. Yet we have also heard the very contrary of this asserted; namely, that dreams bear the sleeper away from the interests of the day, and that in most cases we do not dream of things which have occupied our attention during the day until after they have lost, for our waking life, the stimulating force of belonging to the present. Hence in the analysis of dream-life we are reminded at every step that it is inadmissible to frame general rules without making provision for qualifications by introducing such terms as "frequently," "as a rule," "in most cases," and without being prepared to admit the validity of exceptions.

If interest during the waking state together with the internal and external stimuli that occur during sleep, sufficed to cover the whole aetiology of dreams, we should be in a position to give a satisfactory account of the origin of all the elements of a dream; the problem of the dream-sources would then be solved, leaving us only the task of discriminating between the part played by the psychic and that played by the somatic dream-stimuli in individual dreams. But as a matter of fact no such complete solution of a dream has ever been achieved in any case, and everyone who has attempted such a solution has found that components of the dream- and usually a great many of them- are left whose source he is unable to trace. The interests of the day as a psychic source of dreams are obviously not so influential as to justify the confident assertion that every dreamer continues the activities of his waking life in his dreams.

Other dream-sources of a psychic nature are not known. Hence, with the exception perhaps of the explanation of dreams given by Scherner, to which reference will be made later on, all the explanations found in the literature of the subject show a considerable hiatus whenever there is a question of tracing the images and ideas which are the most characteristic material of dreams. In this dilemma the majority of authors have developed a tendency to belittle as far as possible the share of the psychic factor, which is so difficult to determine, in the evocation of dreams. To be sure, they distinguish as major divisions the nerve-stimulus dream and the association-dream, and assert that the latter has its source exclusively in reproduction (Wundt, p. 365), but they cannot dismiss the doubt as to "whether they appear without any impulsion from organic stimuli" (Volkelt, p. 127). And even the characteristic quality of the pure association-dream disappears. To quote Volkelt (p. 118): "In the association-dream proper, there is no longer any question of such a stable nucleus. Here the loose grouping penetrates even to the very centre of the dream. The imaginative life, already released from the control of reason and intellect, is here no longer held together by the more important psychical and physical stimuli, but is left to its own uncontrolled and confused divagations." Wundt, too, attempts to belittle the psychic factor in the evocation of dreams by asserting that "the phantasms of the dream are perhaps unjustly regarded as pure hallucinations. Probably most dream-representations are really illusions, inasmuch as they emanate from the slight sensory impressions which are never extinguished during sleep" (p. 359, et seq.). Weygandt has adopted this view, and generalizes upon it. He asserts that "the most immediate causes of all dream-representations are sensory stimuli to which reproductive associations then attach themselves" (p. 17). Tissie goes still further in suppressing the psychic sources of excitation (p. 183): "Les reves d'origine absolument psychique n'existent pas"; * and elsewhere (p. 6), "Les pensees de nos reves nous viennent de dehors...." *(2)

* Dreams do not exist whose origin is totally psychic.

*(2) The thoughts of our dreams come from outside.

Those writers who, like the eminent philosopher Wundt, adopt a middle course, do not hesitate to assert that in most dreams there is a cooperation of the somatic stimuli and psychic stimuli which are either unknown or are identified with the interests of the day.

We shall learn later that the problem of dream-formation may be solved by the disclosure of an entirely unsuspected psychic source of excitation. In the meanwhile we shall not be surprised at the over-estimation of the influence of those stimuli which do not originate in the psychic life. It is not merely because they alone may easily be found, and even confirmed by experiment, but because the somatic conception of the origin of dreams entirely corresponds with the mode of thought prevalent in modern psychiatry. Here, it is true, the mastery of the brain over the organism is most emphatically stressed; but everything that might show that the psychic life is independent of demonstrable organic changes, or spontaneous in its manifestations, is alarming to the contemporary psychiatrist, as though such an admission must mean a return to the old-world natural philosophy and the metaphysical conception of the nature of the soul. The distrust of the psychiatrist has placed the psyche under tutelage, so to speak; it requires that none of the impulses of the psyche shall reveal an autonomous power. Yet this attitude merely betrays a lack of confidence in the stability of the causal concatenation between the physical and the psychic. Even where on investigation the psychic may be recognized as the primary cause of a phenomenon, a more profound comprehension of the subject will one day succeed in following up the path that leads to the organic basis of the psychic. But where the psychic must, in the present state of our knowledge, be accepted as the terminus, it need not on that account be disavowed.

The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 1 - D. Why Dreams Are Forgotten After Waking

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