The Interpretation of Dreams

sees the most familiar laws of experience turned upside
down! What ridiculous contradictions he is able to tolerate in the
order of nature and of society, before things go too far, and the very
excess of nonsense leads to an awakening! Sometimes we quite
innocently calculate that three times three make twenty; and we are
not in the least surprised if a dog recites poetry to us, if a dead
person walks to his grave, or if a rock floats on the water. We
solemnly go to visit the duchy of Bernburg or the principality of
Liechtenstein in order to inspect its navy; or we allow ourselves to
be recruited as a volunteer by Charles XII just before the battle of
Poltava."
Binz (p. 33), referring to the theory of dreams resulting from these
impressions, says: "Of 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 to one, if possible, even more
nonsensical and irrational than before; and so the shifting play of
the drowsy brain continues, until we wake, put a hand to our forehead,
and ask ourselves whether we still really possess the faculty of
rational imagination and thought."
{I|E ^paragraph 45}
Maury, Le Sommeil (p. 50) makes, in respect of the relation of the
dream-image to the waking thoughts, a comparison which a physician
will find especially impressive: "La production de ces images que chez
l'homme eveille fait le plus souvent naitre la volonte, correspond,
pour l'intelligence, a ce que sont pour la motilite certains
mouvements que nous offrent la choree et les affections
paralytiques...." * For the rest, he considers the dream "toute une
serie de degradations de la faculte pensante et raisonnante" *(2)
(p. 27).
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* The production of those images which, in the waking man, most
often excite the will, correspond, for the mind, to those which are,
for the motility, certain movements that offer St. Vitus' dance and
paralytic affections...
*(2) A whole series of degradations of the faculty of thinking and
reasoning.
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{I|E ^paragraph 50}
It is hardly necessary to cite the utterances of those authors who
repeat Maury's assertion in respect of the higher individual psychic
activities.
According to Strumpell, in dreams- and even, of course, where the
nonsensical nature of the dream is not obvious- all the logical
operations of the mind, based on relations and associations, recede
into the background (p. 26). According to Spitta (p. 148) ideas in
dreams are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality; while
Radestock and others emphasize the feebleness of judgment and
logical inference peculiar to dreams. According to Jodl (p. 123),
there is no criticism in dreams, no correcting of a series of
perceptions by the content of consciousness as a whole. The same
author states that "All the activities of consciousness occur in
dreams, but they are imperfect, inhibited, and mutually