Freud - Complete Works (95 page)

  
¹
[‘In sleep, all the mental faculties
(except for perception) - intelligence, imagination, memory, will
and morality - remain essentially intact; they are merely applied
to imaginary and unstable objects. A dreamer is an actor who at his
own will plays the parts of madmen and philosophers, of
executioners and their victims, of dwarfs and giants, of demons and
angels.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

569

   The most energetic opponent of
those who seek to depreciate psychical functioning in dreams seems
to be the Marquis d’Hervey de Saint-Denys, with whom Maury
carried on a lively controversy, and whose book, in spite of all my
efforts, I have not succeeded in procuring. Maury (1878, 19) writes
of him: ‘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 distingue guère, selon sa manière de voir, de
l’homme qui laisse vaguer sa pensée en se bouchant les
sens; toute la différence qui sépare alors la
pensée ordinaire de 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.’ ¹ To this Maury adds
‘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
éveillé.’ ²

   Vaschide (1911, 146 f.) gives us
a clearer account of Hervey de Saint-Denys’ book and quotes a
passage from it upon the apparent incoherence of dreams:
‘L’image du rêve est la copie de
l’idée. Le principal est l’idée; la
vision n’est qu’accessoire. Ceci établi, il faut
savoir suivre la marche des idées, il faut savoir analyser
le tissu des rêves; l’incohérence devient alors
compréhensible, les conceptions les plus fantasques
deviennent des faits simples et parfaitement
logiques. . . . Les rêves les plus bizarres
trouvent même une explication des plus logiques quand on sait
les analyser.’ ³

  
¹
[‘The Marquis d’Hervey
attributes complete liberty of action and attention to the
intelligence during sleep, and he seems to think that sleep
consists merely in the blocking of the senses, in their being
closed to the external world. So that on his view a sleeping man
would hardly be different from a man who shut off his senses and
allowed his thought to wander; the only distinction between
ordinary thoughts and those of a sleeper would be that, in the
latter, ideas assume a visible and objective shape and are
indistinguishable from sensations determined by external objects,
while memories take on the appearance of present
events.’]

  
²
[‘There is a further distinction and
one of capital importance: namely, that the intellectual faculties
of a sleeping man do not exhibit the balance maintained in a man
who is awake.’]

  
³
[ ‘Dream-images are copies of ideas.
The essential thing is the idea, the vision is a mere accessory.
When this is once established, we must know how to follow the
sequence of the ideas, we must know how to analyse the texture of
dreams; their incoherence then becomes intelligible, and the most
fantastic notions become simple and perfectly logical
facts. . . . We can even find a most logical
explanation for the strangest dreams if we know how to analyse
them.’]

The Interpretation Of Dreams

570

   Johan Stärcke (1913, 243)
has pointed out that a similar explanation of the incoherence of
dreams was put forward by an earlier writer, Wolf Davidson (1799,
136), whose work was unknown to me: ‘The remarkable leaps
taken by our ideas in dreams all have their basis in the law of
association; sometimes, however, these connections occur in the
mind very obscurely, so that our ideas often seem to have taken a
leap when in fact there has been none.’

   The literature of the subject
thus shows a very wide range of variation in the value which it
assigns to dreams as psychical products. This range extends from
the deepest disparagement, of the kind with which we have become
familiar, through hints at a yet undisclosed worth, to an
overvaluation which ranks dreams far higher than any of the
functions of waking life. Hildebrandt (1875, 19 f.), who, as we
have heard, has summed up the whole of the psychological features
of dream-life in three antinomies, makes use of the two extreme
ends of this range of values for his third paradox: ‘it is a
contrast between an intensification of mental life, an enhancement
of it that not infrequently amounts to virtuosity, and, on the
other hand, a deterioration and enfeeblement which often sinks
below the level of humanity. As regards the former, there are few
of us who could not affirm, from our own experience, that there
emerges from time to time in the creations and fabrics of the
genius of dreams a depth and intimacy of emotion, a tenderness of
feeling, a clarity of vision, a subtlety of observation, and a
brilliance of wit such as we should never claim to have at our
permanent command in our waking lives. There lies in dreams a
marvellous poetry, an apt allegory, an incomparable humour, a rare
irony. A dream looks upon the world in a light of strange idealism
and often enhances the effects of what it sees by its deep
understanding of their essential nature. It pictures earthly beauty
to our eyes in a truly heavenly splendour and clothes dignity with
the highest majesty, it shows us our everyday fears in the
ghastliest shape and turns our amusement into jokes of
indescribable pungency. And sometimes, when we are awake and still
under the full impact of an experience like one of these, we cannot
but feel that never in our life has the real world offered us its
equal.’

The Interpretation Of Dreams

571

   We may well ask whether the
disparaging remarks quoted on earlier pages and this enthusiastic
eulogy can possibly relate to the same thing. Is it that some of
our authorities have overlooked the nonsensical dreams and others
the profound and subtle ones? And if dreams of both kinds occur,
dreams that justify both estimates, may it not be a waste of time
to look for any distinguishing psychological feature of dreams?
Will it not be enough to say that in dreams
anything
is
possible - from the deepest degradation of mental life to an
exaltation of it which is rare in waking hours? However convenient
a solution of this kind might be, what lies against it is the fact
that all of the efforts at research into the problem of dreams seem
to be based on a conviction that some distinguishing feature
does
exist, which is universally valid in its essential
outline and which would clear these apparent contradictions out of
the way.

   There can be no doubt that the
psychical achievements of dreams received readier and warmer
recognition during the intellectual period which has now been left
behind, when the human mind was dominated by philosophy and not by
the exact natural sciences. Pronouncements such as that by Schubert
(1814, 20 f.) that dreams are a liberation of the spirit from the
power of external nature, a freeing of the soul from the bonds of
the senses, and similar remarks by the younger Fichte (1864, 1, 143
f.)¹ and others, all of which represent dreams as an elevation
of mental life to a higher level, seem to us now to be scarcely
intelligible; today they are repeated only by mystics and
pietists.² The introduction of the scientific mode of thought
has brought along with it a reaction in the estimation of dreams.
Medical writers in especial tend to regard psychical activity in
dreams as trivial and valueless; while philosophers and
non-professional observers - amateur psychologists - whose
contributions to this particular subject are not to be despised,
have (in closer alignment with popular feeling) retained a belief
in the psychical value of dreams. Anyone who is inclined to take a
low view of psychical functioning in dreams will naturally prefer
to assign their source to somatic stimulation; whereas those who
believe that the dreaming mind retains the greater part of its
waking capacities have of course no reason for denying that the
stimulus to dreaming can arise within the dreaming mind itself.

  
¹
Cf. Haffner (1887) and Spitta (1882, 11
f.).

  
²
[
Footnote added
1914:] That
brilliant mystic Du Prel, one of the few authors for whose neglect
in earlier editions of this book I should wish to express my
regret, declares that the gateway to metaphysics, so far as men are
concerned, lies not in waking life but in the dream. (Du Prel,
1885, 59.)

The Interpretation Of Dreams

572

   Of the superior faculties which
even a sober comparison may be inclined to attribute to dream-life,
the most marked is that of memory; we have already discussed at
length the not uncommon evidence in favour of this view. Another
point of superiority in dream-life, often praised by earlier
writers - that it rises superior to distance in time and
space  - may easily be shown to have no basis in fact. As
Hildebrandt (1875, ) points out, this advantage is an illusory one;
for dreaming rises superior to time and space in precisely the same
way as does waking thought, and for the very reason that it is
merely a form of thought. It has been claimed for dreams that they
enjoy yet another advantage over waking life in relation to time -
that they are independent of the passage of time in yet another
respect. Dreams such as the one dreamt by Maury of his own
guillotining (see above,
p. 539 f.
) seem to show that a dream
is able to compress into a very short space of time an amount of
perceptual matter far greater than the amount of ideational matter
that can be dealt with by our waking mind. This conclusion has
however been countered by various arguments; since the papers by Le
Lorrain (1894) and Egger (1895) on the apparent duration of dreams,
a long and interesting discussion on the subject has developed, but
it seems unlikely that the last word has yet been said on this
subtle question and the deep implications which it
involves.¹

   Reports of numerous cases seem to
put it beyond dispute that dreams can carry on the intellectual
work of daytime and bring it to conclusions which had not been
reached during the day, and that they can resolve doubts and
problems and be the source of new inspiration for poets and musical
composers. But though the
fact
may be beyond dispute, its
implications are open to many doubts, which raise matters of
principle.²

   Lastly, dreams are reputed to
have the power of divining the future. Here we have a conflict in
which almost insuperable scepticism is met by obstinately repeated
assertions. No doubt we shall be acting rightly in not insisting
that this view has no basis at all in fact, since it is possible
that before long a number of the instances cited may find an
explanation within the bounds of natural psychology.

  
¹
[
Footnote added
1914:] A further
bibliography and a critical discussion of these problems will be
found in Tobowolska (1900).

  
²
[
Footnote added
1914:] Cf. the
criticism in Havelock Ellis (1911, 265).

The Interpretation Of Dreams

573

(F)

THE MORAL SENSE IN DREAMS

   For reasons which will only
become apparent after my own investigations into dreams have been
taken into account, I have isolated from the subject of the
psychology of dreams the special problem of whether and to what
extent moral dispositions and feelings extend into dream-life. Here
too we are met by the same contradictory views which, curiously
enough, we have found adopted by different authors in regard to all
the other functions of the mind during dreams. Some assert that the
dictates of morality have no place in dreams, while others maintain
no less positively that the moral character of man persists in his
dream-life.

   Appeal to the common experience
of dreams seems to establish beyond any doubt the correctness of
the former of these views. Jessen (1855, 553) writes: ‘Nor do
we become better or more virtuous in sleep. On the contrary,
conscience seems to be silent in dreams, for we feel no pity in
them and may commit the worst crimes - theft, violence and murder -
with complete indifference and with no subsequent feelings of
remorse.’

   Radestock (1879, 164): ‘It
should be borne in mind that associations occur and ideas are
linked together in dreams without any regard for reflection, common
sense, aesthetic taste or moral judgement. Judgement is extremely
weak and ethical indifference reigns supreme.’

   Volkelt (1875, 23): ‘In
dreams, as we are all aware, proceedings are especially unbridled
in sexual matters. The dreamer himself is utterly shameless and
devoid of any moral feeling or judgement; moreover, he sees
everyone else, including those for whom he has the deepest respect,
engaged in acts with which he would be horrified to associate them
while he was awake, even in his thoughts.’

   In diametrical opposition to
these, we find statements such as Schopenhauer’s that
everyone who figures in a dream acts and speaks in complete
accordance with his character. K. P. Fischer (1850, 72 f.), quoted
by Spitta (1882, 188), declares that subjective feelings and
longings, or affects and passions, reveal themselves in the freedom
of dream-life, and that people’s moral characteristics are
reflected in their dreams.