The Interpretation of Dreams

traces of the influence of this conception, will of course
be found in the works of all the modern physiologists and
philosophers. It is most completely represented by Maury. It often
seems as though this author conceives the state of being awake or
asleep as susceptible of shifting from one anatomical region to
another; each anatomical region seeming to him to be connected with
a definite psychic function. Here I will merely suggest that even if
the theory of partial waking were confirmed, its finer
superstructure would still call for exhaustive consideration.
No function of dreams, of course, can emerge from this conception of
the dream-life. On the contrary, Binz, one of the chief proponents
of this theory, consistently enough denies that dreams have any status
or importance. He says (p. 357): "All the facts, as we see them,
urge us to characterize the dream as a physical process, in all
cases useless, and in many cases definitely morbid."
{I|G ^paragraph 10}
The expression physical in reference to dreams (the word is
emphasized by the author) points, of course, in more than one
direction. In the first place, it refers to the aetiology of dreams,
which was of special interest to Binz, as he was studying the
experimental production of dreams by the administration of drugs. It
is certainly in keeping with this kind of dream-theory to ascribe
the incitement to dreaming, whenever possible, exclusively to
somatic origins. Presented in the most extreme form the theory is as
follows: After we have put ourselves to sleep by the banishment of
stimuli, there would be no need to dream, and no reason for dreaming
until the morning, when the gradual awakening through the fresh
invasion of stimuli might be reflected in the phenomenon of
dreaming. But, as a matter of fact, it is not possible to protect
our sleep from stimuli; like the germs of life of which Mephistopheles
complained, stimuli come to the sleeper from all directions- from
without, from within, and even from all those bodily regions which
never trouble us during the waking state. Thus our sleep is disturbed;
now this, now that little corner of the psyche is jogged into the
waking state, and the psyche functions for a while with the awakened
fraction, yet is thankful to fall asleep again. The dream is the
reaction to the disturbance of sleep caused by the stimulus, but it
is, when all is said, a purely superfluous reaction.
The description of the dream- which, after all, remains an
activity of the psychic organ- as a physical process has yet another
connotation. So to describe it is to deny that the dream has the
dignity of a psychic process. The old simile of "the ten fingers of
a person ignorant of music running over the keyboard of an instrument"
perhaps best illustrates in what esteem the dream is commonly held
by the representatives of exact science. Thus conceived, it becomes
something wholly insusceptible of interpretation. How could the ten
fingers