Dream Psychology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 183 pages of information about Dream Psychology.
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Dream Psychology eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 183 pages of information about Dream Psychology.
by memory we found to be correct, but not troublesome, as this is only the last manifest operation in the work of disfigurement which has been active from the beginning of the dream-work.  In the bitter and seemingly irreconcilable controversy as to whether the psychic life sleeps at night or can make the same use of all its capabilities as during the day, we have been able to agree with both sides, though not fully with either.  We have found proof that the dream thoughts represent a most complicated intellectual activity, employing almost every means furnished by the psychic apparatus; still it cannot be denied that these dream thoughts have originated during the day, and it is indispensable to assume that there is a sleeping state of the psychic life.  Thus, even the theory of partial sleep has come into play; but the characteristics of the sleeping state have been found not in the dilapidation of the psychic connections but in the cessation of the psychic system dominating the day, arising from its desire to sleep.  The withdrawal from the outer world retains its significance also for our conception; though not the only factor, it nevertheless helps the regression to make possible the representation of the dream.  That we should reject the voluntary guidance of the presentation course is uncontestable; but the psychic life does not thereby become aimless, for we have seen that after the abandonment of the desired end-presentation undesired ones gain the mastery.  The loose associative connection in the dream we have not only recognized, but we have placed under its control a far greater territory than could have been supposed; we have, however, found it merely the feigned substitute for another correct and senseful one.  To be sure we, too, have called the dream absurd; but we have been able to learn from examples how wise the dream really is when it simulates absurdity.  We do not deny any of the functions that have been attributed to the dream.  That the dream relieves the mind like a valve, and that, according to Robert’s assertion, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless through representation in the dream, not only exactly coincides with our theory of the twofold wish-fulfillment in the dream, but, in his own wording, becomes even more comprehensible for us than for Robert himself.  The free indulgence of the psychic in the play of its faculties finds expression with us in the non-interference with the dream on the part of the foreconscious activity.  The “return to the embryonal state of psychic life in the dream” and the observation of Havelock Ellis, “an archaic world of vast emotions and imperfect thoughts,” appear to us as happy anticipations of our deductions to the effect that primitive modes of work suppressed during the day participate in the formation of the dream; and with us, as with Delage, the suppressed material becomes the mainspring of the dreaming.

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Dream Psychology from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.