Binz4 (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."
Maury48 (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 choreé 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,66 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 According to Spitta,64 (p. 148) the presentations in the dream are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality. Radestock54 and others emphasize the weakness of judgment and decision in the dream. According to Jodl37 (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 Stricker77 78 (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,76 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,64 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).
Scholz59 (p. 37) sees a psychic activity manifested in the dream in the "allegorising interpretation" to which the dream material is subjected. Siebeck62 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. Delbœuf16 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. Strümpell62 (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, aesthetic 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. Wundt76 and Weygandt75). 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 Volkelt72 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." Maury48 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, Spitta64 (p. 118), assures us that the same psychological laws which govern the waking state rule the dream also, or that another (Dugas19) 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 Ellis23 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 Delbœuf16 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 bourreaus 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,48 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.