Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/65

Rh Hildebrandt (p. 45) says: "What wonderful jumps the dreamer allows himself, e.g., in his chain of reasoning! With what unconcern he sees the most familiar laws of experience turned upside down! What ridiculous contradictions he can tolerate in the orders of nature and society before things go too far, as we say, and the overstraining of the nonsense brings an awakening! We often multiply quite unconcernedly: three times three make twenty; we are not at all surprised when a dog recites poetry for us, when a dead person walks to his grave, and when a rock swims on the water; we go in all earnestness by high command to the duchy of Bernburg or the principality of Lichtenstein in order to observe the navy of the country, or we allow ourselves to be recruited as a volunteer by Charles XII. shortly before the battle of Poltawa."

Binz (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."

Maury (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, 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 According to Spitta, (p. 148) the presentations in the dream are entirely withdrawn from the laws of causality.