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The Interpretation of Dreams Chapter 1 - G. Dream-Theories and the Function of the Dream Psychology
CHAPTER 1, Section H
H. The Relation between Dreams and Mental Diseases
When we speak of the relation of dreams to mental derangement, we may mean
three different things: (1) aetiological and clinical relations, as when a dream
represents or initiates a psychotic condition, or occurs subsequently to such a
condition; (2) changes which the dream-life undergoes in cases of mental
disease; (3) inner relations between dreams and psychoses, analogies which point
to an intimate relationship. These manifold relations between the two series of
phenomena were in the early days of medical science- and are once more at the
present time- a favourite theme of medical writers, as we may learn from the
literature on the subject collated by Spitta, Radestock, Maury, and Tissie.
Recently Sante de Sanctis has directed his attention to this relationship. * For
the purposes of our discussion it will suffice merely to glance at this
important subject.
* Among the more recent authors who have occupied themselves with these
relations are: Fere, Ideler, Lasegue, Pichon, Regis Vespa, Giessler, Kazodowsky,
Pachantoni, and others.
As to the clinical and aetiological relations between dreams and the psychoses,
I will report the following observations as examples: Hohnbaum asserts (see
Krauss) that the first attack of insanity is frequently connected with a
terrifying anxiety-dream, and that the predominating idea is related to this
dream. Sante de Sanctis adduces similar observations in respect of paranoiacs,
and declares the dream to be, in some of them, "la vraie cause determinante de
la folie." * The psychosis may come to life quite suddenly, simultaneously with
the dream that contains its effective and delusive explanation, or it may
develop slowly through subsequent dreams that have still to struggle against
doubt. In one of de Sanctis's cases an intensively moving dream was accompanied
by slight hysterical attacks, which, in their turn, were followed by an anxious
melancholic state. Fere (cited by Tissie) refers to a dream which was followed
by hysterical paralysis. Here the dream is presented as the aetiology of mental
derangement, although we should be making a statement equally consistent with
the facts were we to say that the first manifestation of the mental derangement
occurred in the dream-life, that the disorder first broke through in the dream.
In other instances, the morbid symptoms are included in the dream-life, or the
psychosis remains confined to the dream-life. Thus Thomayer calls our attention
to anxiety-dreams which must be conceived as the equivalent of epileptic
attacks. Allison has described cases of nocturnal insanity (see Radestock), in
which the subjects are apparently perfectly well in the day-time, while
hallucinations, fits of frenzy, and the like regularly make their appearance at
night. De Sanctis and Tissie record similar observations (the equivalent of a
paranoic dream in an alcoholic, voices accusing a wife of infidelity). Tissie
records many observations of recent date in which behaviour of a pathological
character (based on delusory hypotheses, obsessive impulses) had their origin in
dreams. Guislain describes a case in which sleep was replaced by an intermittent
insanity.
* The real determining cause of the madness.
We cannot doubt that one day the physician will concern himself not only with
the psychology, but also with the psycho-pathology of dreams.
In cases of convalescence from insanity, it is often especially obvious that
while the functions may be healthy by day the dream-life may still partake of
the psychosis. Gregory is said to have been the first to call attention to such
cases (see Krauss). Macario (cited by Tissie) gives an account of a maniac who,
a week after his complete recovery, once more experienced in dreams the flux of
ideas and the unbridled impulses of his disease.
Concerning the changes which the dream-life undergoes in chronic psychotics,
little research has been undertaken as yet. On the other hand, early attention
was given to the inner relationship between dreams and mental disturbances, a
relationship which is demonstrated by the complete agreement of the
manifestations occurring in each. According to Maury, Cabanis, in his Rapports
du Physique et du Moral, was the first to call attention to this relationship;
he was followed by Lelut, J. Moreau, and more particularly the philosopher Maine
de Biran. The comparison between the two is of course older still. Radestock
begins the chapter in which he deals with the subject by citing a number of
opinions which insist on the analogy between insanity and dreaming. Kant says
somewhere: "The lunatic is a dreamer in the waking state." According to Krauss,
"Insanity is a dream in which the senses are awake." Schopenhauer terms the
dream a brief insanity, and insanity a long dream. Hagen describes delirium as a
dream-life which is inducted not by sleep but by disease. Wundt, in his
Physiologische Psychologie, declares: "As a matter of fact we ourselves may in
dreams experience almost all the manifestations which we observe in the asylums
for the insane."
The specific points of agreement in consequence of which such a comparison
commends itself to our judgment are enumerated by Spitta, who groups them (very
much as Maury has done) as follows: "(1) Suspension, or at least retardation of
self-consciousness, and consequently ignorance of the condition as such, the
impossibility of astonishment, and a lack of moral consciousness. (2) Modified
perception of the sensory organs; that is, perception is as a rule diminished in
dreams, and greatly enhanced in insanity. (3) Mutual combination of ideas
exclusively in accordance with the laws of association and reproduction, hence
automatic series-formations: hence again a lack of proportion in the relations
between ideas (exaggerations, phantasms); and the results of all this: (4)
Changes in- for example, inversions of- the personality, and sometimes of the
idiosyncrasies of the character (perversities)."
Radestock adds a few additional data concerning the analogous nature of the
material of dreams and of mental derangement: "The greatest number of
hallucinations and illusions are found in the sphere of the senses of sight and
hearing and general sensation. As in dreams, the fewest elements are supplied by
the senses of smell and taste. The fever-patient, like the dreamer, is assailed
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
dreams and the psychoses receives its full value only when, like a family
resemblance, it is extended to the subtler points of mimicry, and even 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,
too, the insane see radiant images of happiness, eminence, and wealth. The
supposed possession of estates and the imaginary fulfilment of wishes, the
denial or destruction of which have actually been a psychic cause of the
insanity, often form the main content of the delirium. The woman who has lost a
dearly beloved child experiences in her delirium the joys of maternity; the man
who has suffered reverses of fortune deems himself immensely wealthy; and the
jilted girl sees herself tenderly beloved."
(This passage from Radestock is an abstract of a brilliant exposition of
Griesinger's (p. 111), which reveals, with the greatest clarity, wish-fulfilment
as a characteristic of the imagination common to dreams and to the psychoses. My
own investigations have taught me that here is to be found the key to a
psychological theory of dreams and of the psychoses.)
"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 in both,
and the rapid flux of imaginings in the dream corresponds to the flux of ideas
in the psychoses. Both are devoid of any measure of time. The splitting of the
personality in dreams, which, for instance, distributes one's own knowledge
between two persons, one of whom, the strange person, corrects one's own ego in
the dream, entirely corresponds with the well-known splitting of the personality
in hallucinatory paranoia; the dreamer, too, hears his own thoughts expressed by
strange voices. Even the constant delusive ideas find their analogy in the
stereotyped and recurring pathological dream (reve obsedant). After recovering
from delirium, patients not infrequently declare that the whole period of their
illness appeared to them like an uncomfortable dream; indeed, they inform us
that sometimes during their illness they have suspected that they were only
dreaming, just as often happens in the sleep-dream.
In view of all this, it is not surprising that Radestock should summarize his
own opinion, and that of many others, in the following words: "Insanity, an
abnormal morbid phenomenon, is to be regarded as an enhancement of the
periodically recurring normal dream-state" (p. 228).
Krauss attempted to base the relationship between the dream and insanity upon
their aetiology (or rather upon the sources of excitation), thus, perhaps,
making the relationship even more intimate than was possible on the basis of the
analogous nature of the phenomena manifested. According to him, the fundamental
element common to both is, as we have already learned, the organically
conditioned sensation, the sensation of physical stimuli, the general sensation
arising out of contributions from all the organs (cf. Peisse, cited by Maury, p.
52).
The undeniable agreement between dreams and mental derangement, extending even
to characteristic details, constitutes one of the strongest confirmations 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 diminished psychic
activity. One cannot expect, for the present, to derive the final explanation of
the dream from the psychic derangements, since, as is well known, our
understanding of the origin of the latter is still highly unsatisfactory. It is
very probable, however, that a modified conception of the dream must also
influence our views regarding the inner mechanism of mental disorders, and hence
we may say that we are working towards the explanation of the psychoses when we
endeavour to elucidate the mystery of dreams.
ADDENDUM 1909
I shall have to justify myself for not extending my summary of the literature of
dream-problems to cover the period between the first appearance of this book and
the publication of the second edition. This justification may not seem very
satisfactory to the reader; none the less, to me it was decisive. The motives
which induced me to summarize the treatment of dreams in the literature of the
subject have been exhausted by the foregoing introduction; to have continued
this would have cost me a great deal of effort and would not have been
particularly useful or instructive. For the interval in question- a period of
nine years- has yielded nothing new or valuable as regards the conception of
dreams, either in actual material or in novel points of view. In most of the
literature which has appeared since the publication of my own work the latter
has not been mentioned or discussed; it has, of course, received the least
attention from the so-called "research-workers on dreams," who have thus
afforded a brilliant example of the aversion to learning anything new so
characteristic of the scientist. "Les savants ne sont pas curieux," * said the
scoffer Anatole France. If there were such a thing in science as the right of
revenge, I in my turn should be justified in ignoring the literature which has
appeared since the publication of this book. The few reviews which have appeared
in the scientific journals are so full of misconceptions and lack of
comprehension that my only possible answer to my critics would be a request that
they should read this book over again- or perhaps merely that they should read
it!
* The learned are not inquisitive.
In the works of those physicians who make use of the psycho-analytic method of
treatment a great many dreams have been recorded and interpreted in accordance
with my directions. In so far as these works go beyond the confirmation of my
own assertions, I have noted their results in the context of my exposition. A
supplementary bibliography at the end of this volume comprises the most
important of these new publications. The comprehensive work on the dream by
Sante de Sanctis, of which a German translation appeared soon after its
publication, was produced simultaneously with my own, so that I could not review
his results, nor could he comment upon mine. I am sorry to have to express the
opinion that this laborious work is exceedingly poor in ideas, so poor that one
could never divine from it the possibility of the problems which I have treated
in these pages.
I can think of only two publications which touch on my own treatment of the
dream-problems. A young philosopher, H. Swoboda, who has ventured to extend W.
Fliess's discovery of biological periodicity (in series of twenty-three and
twenty-eight days) to the psychic field, has produced an imaginative essay, * in
which, among other things, he has used this key to solve the riddle of dreams.
Such a solution, however, would be an inadequate estimate of the significance of
dreams. The material content of dreams would be explained by the coincidence of
all those memories which, on the night of the dream, complete one of these
biological periods for the first or the nth time. A personal communication of
the author's led me to assume that he himself no longer took this theory very
seriously. But it seems that I was mistaken in this conclusion: I shall record
in another place some observations made with reference to Swoboda's thesis,
which did not, however, yield convincing results. It gave me far greater
pleasure to find by chance, in an unexpected quarter, a conception of the dream
which is in complete agreement with the essence of my own. The relevant dates
preclude the possibility that this conception was influenced by reading my book:
I must therefore hail this as the only demonstrable concurrence with the
essentials of my theory of dreams to be found in the literature of the subject.
The book which contains the passage that I have in mind was published (in its
second edition) in 1910, by Lynkeus, under the title Phantasien eines Realisten.
* H. Swoboda, Die Perioden des Menschlichen Organismus, 1904.
ADDENDUM 1914
The above apologia was written in 1909. Since then, the state of affairs has
certainly undergone a change; my contribution to the "interpretation of dreams"
is no longer ignored in the literature of the subject. But the new situation
makes it even more impossible to continue the foregoing summary. The
Interpretation of Dreams has evoked a whole series of new contentions and
problems, which have been expounded by the authors in the most varied fashions.
But I cannot discuss these works until I have developed the theories to which
their authors have referred. Whatever has appeared to me as valuable in this
recent literature I have accordingly reviewed in the course of the following
exposition.
The Interpretation of Dreams
Chapter II. THE METHOD OF DREAM INTERPRETATION
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