Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/61

Rh all these tests, it may make us believe that we may touch the rose that we see in the dream, and still we only dream. According to Delbœuf there is no valid criterion to show whether something is a dream or a conscious reality, except—and that only in practical generality—the fact of awakening. "I declare delusional everything that is experienced between the period of falling asleep and awakening, if I notice on awakening that I lie in my bed undressed" (p. 84). "I have considered the dream pictures real during sleep in consequence of the mental habit, which cannot be put to sleep, of perceiving an outer world with which I can contrast my ego." Haffner made an attempt similar to Delbœuf's to explain the dream activity on the basis of an alteration which must result in an introduction of an abnormal condition in the otherwise correct function of the intact psychic apparatus, but he described this condition in somewhat different words. He states that the first distinguishing mark of the dream is the absence of time and space, i.e. the emancipation of the presentation from the position in the order of time and space which is common to the individual. Allied to this is the second fundamental character of the dream, the mistaking of the hallucinations, imaginations, and phantasy-combinations for objective perceptions. The sum total of the higher psychic forces, especially formation of ideas, judgment, and argumentation on the one hand, and the free self-determination on the other hand, connect themselves with the sensory phantasy pictures and at all times have them as a substratum. These activities too, therefore, participate in the irregularity of the dream presentation. We say they participate, for our faculties of judgment and will power are in themselves in no way altered during sleep. In reference to activity, we are just as keen and just as free as in the waking state. A man cannot act contrary to the laws of thought, even in the dream, i.e. he is unable to harmonise with that which represents itself as contrary to him, &c.; he can only desire in the dream that which he presents to himself as good (sub ratione boni). But in this application of the laws of thinking and willing the human mind is led astray in the dream through mistaking one presentation for another. It thus happens that we form and commit in the dream the greatest contradictions, while, on the other hand, we display the keenest judgments and the most consequential chains of reasoning, and can make the most virtuous and sacred resolutions. Lack of orientation is the whole secret of the flight by which our phantasy moves in the dream, and lack of critical reflection and mutual understanding with others is the main source of the reckless extravagances of our judgments, hopes, and wishes in the dream" (p. 18).

As the deviation from the outer world is taken as the stamp for the most striking characteristics of the dream, it will be worth while mentioning some ingenious observations of old Burdach which will throw light on the relation of the sleeping mind to the outer world and at the same time serve to prevent us from over-estimating the above deductions. "Sleep results only under the condition," says Burdach, "that the mind is